


Their Promise: Book I

by Waifine



Series: Their Promise (Yu-Gi-Oh! The Story of Kisara) [1]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Ancient Egypt, Anime/Manga Fusion, Canon Compliant, Duelist Kingdom Arc, F/M, Gen, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Manga & Anime, Memory World Arc, Multi, Past Child Abuse, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-11-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 18:47:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 64,916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24760294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waifine/pseuds/Waifine
Summary: "When he looked at her, Kisara knew for certain. His scowl was just as hollow as her smile. Inside, they were both screaming in pain." The untold story of Kisara, from Atlantis, to Ancient Egypt, to Medieval London, to its final conclusion in Modern Japan.Kisara Pegasus is the adopted daughter of Maximillion Pegasus when the young boy Mokuba Kaiba is brought into her home against his will. Determined to help him, Kisara is impeded by a terrible injury across her torso, as though she had been ripped in two. An injury that coincides exactly to the day that Seto Kaiba, Mokuba's older brother, lost his duel to Yugi Mutou... and tore in half a Blue-Eyes White Dragon card...A retelling of the Duelist Kingdom Arc, with Kisara at the forefront of the story.
Relationships: Critias/Kisara (Yu-Gi-Oh), Kaiba Seto/Kisara, Kaiba Seto/Kisara/Priest Seto, Kisara/C. Seto Rosenkreuz, Kisara/Priest Seto, Thief King Bakura/Kisara, Yami Bakura/Kisara
Series: Their Promise (Yu-Gi-Oh! The Story of Kisara) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1790641
Comments: 28
Kudos: 20





	1. I Promise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is in dedication to AlaraLeongod of DeviantART, without whom the character of Kisara, as she is here presented, developed, and explored, could never have come into being.
> 
> – Thank you.

Book I | **“I Promise”**  
Noah’s Arc

Part I

_Seto Kaiba: 12 years old_

_Kisara: 10 years old_

**…**

Seto hovered outside the gate, next to the limousine, waiting for Gozaburo. How long was the bastard going to take, anyway? Seto looked up at the orphanage – one of many – which Gozaburo made a show of going to and supporting. The CEO of the biggest war company in the country: a man who dearly adores the orphans of this world. The thought alone made Seto’s upper lip curl up into a sneer at the irony. He caught himself though, and righted his face. Not only would he get it from the old bastard if he didn’t ‘present’ himself accordingly, but also Mokuba didn’t like it when he sneered. He had never sneered before Gozaburo. However, Seto was finding it harder and harder to oblige his little brother in _not_ sneering. He was twelve now, two years Gozaburo Kaiba’s adopted son. Two years. It was 1990 now. How had he survived? _With a sneer on my face,_ he thought wryly.

He never went into the orphanages, soup kitchens or any of the places Gozaburo visited and to which he donated money. He hated seeing the other orphans. He hated the way they looked at him with envy, as if he was _born_ into this, as if he was so much _luckier._ As if they couldn’t have done it themselves! Where he was he got by his own strength. If they envied him, they were _weak._ And also… also… he hated how wrong they were… how wrong _he_ had been. Some ‘better life’ he had found for himself and his little brother. Ha. Still, he could push through. He _always_ pushed through.

Seto swallowed and then winced with the pain. He gingerly raised a hand to his throat, wrapped as it was by the gold embroidered turtleneck jacket. It was his step-father’s design, this uniform. It was compact… and it hid the marks where the butler’s, Hobson’s, whip and corrective-collar had rubbed Seto’s skin raw. “Tish,” he sneered. How long was he going to have to stand here?

“Hey.”

Not having been focusing on anything in particular, his eyes narrowed onto a figure on the opposite side of the gate. She looked much younger than he did at first glance, slight and delicate as she was. At second glance though, he wasn’t so sure. Those huge blue eyes, even lighter and clearer than his, offset any definite age. Her skin was much paler than anyone else’s he had ever seen, so that the blue veins traveling up her arms were visible as she clutched onto the bars that rose vertically to make the gate. She was wearing a very loose smock. He would always remember that later – though kill him if he could remember the color – because, on her chest, all the veins coursed through that pale skin to where her heart was, and he was fascinated. Loose as it was and pale as she was, the scratches and bruises came up starkly on her skin. There were many of them. She had white hair. It seemed to glimmer blue, but perhaps that was just the lighting and the shade. He appraised her in silence for a good while before answering. She was like a little imp from one of his little brother’s fairy tale books. He swallowed, winced, and spoke. “Yes?” he asked curtly.

“Are you alright?”

Be blinked at her. “Excuse me?”

“When you swallowed… were you alright? If you have a sore throat I can make you some tea. I just learned how to do it.” She smiled at him, stretching a split in her lower lip.

He blinked at her a few more times. _What?_ “My throat is none of your concern,” he snapped. He was ashamed to think it, but he was a little nervous of the driver hearing him ‘complaining’ about his throat to anyone. What the driver knew, Gozaburo knew. And Gozaburo knew that to punish Seto all he had to do was aim for the heart – his little brother, Mokuba.

This girl, with her strange and beautiful features, was a load of trouble from word one. Blue. Pale. Blue. White. Tish, if Mokuba had been here he would have said she was like a human version of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon card he’d crayoned for Seto. Seto lived off that card. It what was what kept him going. It was the ultimate goal: to be a man worthy and independent enough to easily be considered the holder of a – no, all – Blue-Eyes.

Seto had expected this girl to flinch away and look hurt. That was what most children did when he snapped at them, Mokuba in particular. He had been snapping at him too often lately. She, however, just pulled her lower lip into her mouth and sucked on it, looking remorseful. Finally, she let it slip again, now glistening a little. “I’m sorry. I don’t spend much time with people, so I don’t really know what I’m allowed to ask.” She blinked at nothing in particular for a moment before an idea came to her. “Can I say what _I_ think about you? And it’s alright. I don’t mind that it’s not your business! So… would you be alright with that?”

He wished that he had not drawn a comparison between her and the Blue-Eyes. It added a familiarity of nature onto her splendor of appearance that he didn’t much like. Liked too well, rather. _Don’t be stupid. Just look at her! The dragon is strong. She’s brittle as a dry leaf. Blue-Eyes is colossal. She’s petite. And most blatantly of all, she’s a girl._ He shrugged. “Whatever. While you’re at it you might as well throw in your name and age.” Why was he doing this?

That smile got so wide that Seto actually began to worry that the split might open again and start bleeding. She pressed herself against the bars eagerly and in a rush she said, “My name’s Kisara. I’m ten. And I saw you and thought you were beautiful because you look like you’re doing what you’re doing for someone, what with the way you keep straightening your face, and if I was that someone I’d be really happy to know you and as I’m not I’m a little jealous.” She looked a little nervous, as if she was not used to saying what she thought out loud, but at the same time was very happy and pleased that she did.

There was an impassive mask that Seto had and which he wore for his step-father’s pleasure morning, noon and night. It had somehow managed to slip eschew and was now dangling by his chin. That was the only explanation _he_ could think of for why his jaw should be hanging open as it was. Suddenly he was finding that he really would not have minded if the Blue-Eyes turned out to be female. When he came into his own he would have to make sure to ask Maximillion Pegasus, the creator of the Duel Monsters card game and also his idol, about that.

“You’re a whole two years younger than me? I… I thought…I mean, I wasn’t sure so…” he was tongue tied. He tried to swallow. And winced.

“Are-?” Kisara opened her mouth but, upon remembering that it was none of her business, buttoned it shut again. They stood, staring at each other in silence for a moment from their respective sides of the gate. If she was already ten there was little chance of her being adopted. Without a word, looking over his shoulder only once to see the driver immersed in some romance novel, Seto stepped closer to the gate, unbuttoning the top of his collar as he went. He angled his head up, so he didn’t see her reaction to the red welts that coursed along this neck. He did, however, hear the gasp.

Before he could do a thing about it Kisara went on her tip toes, leaned her head through the bars, gently angled and tucked her face under his chin, and trailed her lips along his neck in little kisses. Again, he couldn’t react, not even when she went back onto her own feet, her face slipping through to her side of the gate. Slowly he tilted his face forward again. _She just…_

“I’m sorry. Should I not have done that?”

He swallowed. He didn’t feel anything. Just those gentle soft lips trying to make everything better… “It isn’t normal,” he answered hoarsely.

“Oh.”

“It’s fine though.” He found himself gripping the bars of the gate now too, his face just above hers. “I mean, you’re not really normal, and I think… when I saw you _I_ thought…” She had reached her hands back up to him and was carefully re-buttoning his collar, as if she knew better than he that if anyone found it unbuttoned he would be in terrible trouble. “I thought that…” What could he say? He suddenly wanted to say everything. Her hair. Her skin. Her eyes. He wanted to press his fingers where all those blue veins channeled to the heart. “…you look like my favorite dragon.”

…Damn.

Seto knew very little about girls. …That ought to be rephrased: He knew absolutely _nothing_ about girls. But even ‘nothing’ covered some ground and he knew that of all the complements one could pay a girl – while it was perfectly alright to talk about her hair, her skin, her eyes – saying that she looked like a dragon was never a good idea.

Sure enough, she started to cry.

“No. Hey, look. I didn’t mean…” Why? Why was it that when he actually cared about a girl’s reaction, rather than her swooning like the rest of the accursed female population, she burst into tears? WHY?

“I’m sorry,” she spluttered again. “I’m tired and a little worn out and it’s just everything together, but no one’s ever said that I _looked_ like their favorite anything. And,” sniff, “and I really like you,” sniff, “so I was really worried that you would _hate_ me. And looking like your favorite anything,” she coughed and sneezed a little, wiping her nose on the back of her hand, “it makes me really happy.” And she beamed up at him, her eyes now _shining_ with that blue luster. His knees were not going weak. He was Seto… Seto bloody Kaiba, and Seto bloody Kaiba’s knees did not go weak. _Fine then… what’s a synonym for weak?_

He swallowed and nervously let the corners of his mouth turn up, a gesture he had been suppressing for the better part of the conversation. “You keep smiling like that and your lip will break again.” He paused. Then, “Are you going to be alright? I mean… don’t take this the wrong way, but it looks like you’ve been beat–”

“–I could say the same for you,” she answered, still smiling.

He outright grinned. He couldn’t help it. Here was someone who did not envy him his misery. She just cared. Had just come over to ask if he was alright. How long had it been since someone had understood what he felt… and cared?

“My name’s Seto.” He swallowed hard again. It didn’t hurt. “And I’m serious,” he said, now leaning between the bars himself. His head was uncomfortably compressed a little as he went through. “You’ll crack your lip again…” he was breathless before he even did it. He hadn’t done anything this… this _human_ in years. It was nothing short of exhilarating. And then he felt that one rough spot on her otherwise smooth lips and wondered if this was what it had been like kissing his neck. Then, for a while, he stopped wondering altogether.

Voices floated towards them from a distance off. A door closed. Seto dragged himself away from her reluctantly, his hair jostling as he pulled his face back between the bars. He looked up then. There, standing in front of the orphanage, all clustered together in conversation, were the masters of the place and his own, personal, keeper. Gozaburo was standing with his back to the gate, distinguishable by his trademark brick red suit.

Seto’s fists tightened on the bars. _Someday… someday soon I’ll be free of you._

“Seto…”

His eyes snapped back to Kisara. Standing as she was, fragile and thin behind those bars, she looked like she was in a cage.

 _A cage…?_ Why did that look so uncomfortably familiar. _I have to get her out,_ he thought suddenly. _I need to get her to a good family._ It seemed like the obvious and necessary thing to do. He felt as if… as if he had done it before.

“Listen to me,” he glided one hand along the bar until it overlapped one of hers. “I can’t break you out again, or run with you, like I did last time.” What was he _saying?_ “But I’ll get you out of here. I promise. You’re going to get adopted. I’ll protect you.”

“Seto! While you may have a surplus of leisure time, I do not. Get in the car!” The master of the orphanage had unlocked a door the size of a man in the large gate, and Gozaburo had stepped through it. He was now heading to the limousine without a second glance at Seto, or at Kisara. Seto felt an inferno swelling inside him. _Leisure time!? What bloody leisure time you old miserable b–_ Kisara’s other hand closed on top of his so that they made something of a pile on the bar.

“I’ll protect you too, Seto.”

He did not know how she had known that. After all, while he was the _KaibaCorp._ heir with, as far as she knew, a thousand assets at his disposal, she was still behind the orphanage gate when she made her promise. However, Seto understood it was not that hard of a question when he actually sat down and thought about it, though that was only many years later. Kisara had _known_ that he did not have a thousand assets at his disposal. She had known that he was just as desperate as she was, and just as helpless. Seto realized that she must have seen in him that which he had always been trying to convince himself of: Though he was helpless now, someday he would overthrow Gozaburo and take his and his brother’s lives into his own hands again. Kisara must have seen that resolve in him. It must have been the same as her own. And so… she made her promise. Their promise.

That very night Seto called the only man in this world whom he even remotely admired, if from a distance. A CEO of war machines and a CEO of children’s playing cards had little to talk about over dinner but still, that did not mean that Seto could not get in contact with the man easily.

He called Maximillion Pegasus himself.

Seto discovered something about the creator of Duel Monsters five minutes into their conversation as, in the dead of night, he sat up in bed, covers over his head, gingery feeling at the skin on his neck and holding the phone with his other hand. His discovery was this: He did not much like Maximillion Pegasus. At first the fop just took it as a prank call, giggling at Seto’s utterly serious request. It was only when he asked Seto to describe what Kisara looked like that his interest perked up. Seto had not much liked that either. _Now_ he was treating the topic with delicacy, as if the features he had described were of some importance. Had Pegasus too made the parallel between the Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Kisara? And if he had, why was it important? The two were not _actually_ related. Seto did not ask if the Blue-Eyes was female.

A month later Seto Kaiba caught a glimpse of the newly adopted Kisara Pegasus on the front page of _The Domino Times._

They saw nothing of each other from then on. _KaibaCorp._ was for war machines. _Industrial Illusions_ was for Duel Monsters. After Kaiba usurped Gozaburo’s position he still did not make an effort to see her. Somehow he felt that, in the struggle, he had lost something of that ‘beautiful’ quality Kisara had first admired him for and, in his own turn, she never _had_ come and saved him from his sorrows.

Then Pegasus kidnapped Mokuba and usurped his company.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustration of the the kisses exchanged between Kisara and Seto: [HERE](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/621746872924684288/he-swallowed-and-nervously-let-the-corners-of-his)


	2. That First Cage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Seto saw Kisara through that wrought iron orphanage gate, it was not the first time he'd seen her behind bars. In a cage. Nor was it the first time he'd done everything in his power to free her. That story was born millennia before, in distant sands.

Book I | **That First Cage**

Memory Arc

Part I

_Seto: 15 years old_

_Kisara: 13 years old_

**…**

Seto reined in his horse, his eyes fixed on a pool of light spilling over a distant sand dune. _What on Earth?_ He could not think of any caravan routes that went this way. Memphis was a day and a night’s ride away, and even so it had not been the capital of Egypt for many lifetimes. Traders usually stuck to the Nile river when they entered the Delta, and headed straight for Thebes. Seto had first headed for that pool of light thinking that it was his village. Now, however, looking northwest of this dune, he could see the fainter pool of light which _was_ his village, and where his mother was even now waiting for him.

He idly reached back a hand and felt for the sacks of wheat his horse was carrying. It was dark already… his mother would be worried… His eyes slid back to that closer pool of light. _It’s on the way,_ he thought, kicking into his horse’s flanks to continue in the direction he had first been heading, spurring her forward. He loved the speed. A ravine was up ahead. He smirked into the darkness, rising a little in his saddle. With a muffled ‘ha’ he threw himself, and the horse, over it.

Seto closed his eyes and pressed himself against his ride’s neck, taking in the sensation. For a moment… just a moment… it was like flying. And then, invariably, her hooves hit the ground, and they cantered on.

After a short ride he halted on a dune just short of the pool of light. It _was_ a caravan, even if it _was not_ a normal route. A very short caravan of one… two… three wagons, but still a caravan.

Seto held his horse steady as she pawed the ground. The sand slipped out from under her a little. Luckily that pool of light he had spotted, while large enough to be seen from a distance, was more of a puddle than a pool. It was coming from a campfire, as he’d suspected. And there were the traders.

 _A waste of my time after all,_ he thought, turning his horse around. It would be better if they did not spot him, hovering over them as he was. At best they might take away his wheat and horse. At worst, they might throw _him_ in one of those cages. At the thought his eyes slid back to the wagons casually… and froze.

Apart from the campfire there was one other light spot against the black sand. _Go,_ a voice in his mind told him to kick his horse into action and be off. _Go. It’s none of your business. You’re not a thief. Go._

Oh, he was going. He was off his horse, sliding down the far side of the sand dune, circling around it, and crouching behind one of the other two wagons before it fully dawned on him that he was going the wrong direction. _I must be mad,_ he thought distractedly, digging his fingers into the wooden framework of the wagon and his heals into the sand. Some sand pushed up against the bare skin of his ankle. It was cold already.

The desert was like that – scorching hot by noon and chilling by nightfall. Now that he was not on horseback the cold was beginning to seep in up through his feet. If that was the case _… she must be freezing,_ he thought, his eyes locked on that blotch, almost offensive, against the otherwise smooth darkness.

There was a whoop of laughter from the campfire that almost sent Seto’s heart up though his throat. Cold as it was, he was not simply shivering because of the night air. _I am about to steal from slavers. From a whole bushel of slavers. …I must be mad,_ he thought again, his knees quivering a little. His fingers tightened on the woodwork.

Every footstep seemed to take an age, and every quiet ‘pad’ through the sand seemed much, much too audible. As he came closer to the wagon, however, his mind drifted from the danger posed by the slavers and to the appearance of this strange, strange girl, for she was a girl. She looked nothing like any girl he had ever seen in the village and Ra knew there were enough of them there following him around – fifteen years old, they said, it was time for him to settle down. Thank you, no – but she was certainly a girl…

She had a mop of white hair atop her head. Now that he was close enough he could see her too-pale form etched out in the darkness. She was shivering violently. _Bastards._ From where he crouched he could catch snatches of their conversation. “Haha! We were really lucky with that one.” “Features like that… I’ve never seen anything like it. She’ll fetch a good price.” “It’s a good thing we fished her out of the water when we did!” “Oy, you reckon she’s still a virgin?” “Only one way to find out!” “Settle down you two. No damaging the merchandise.”

The wood of the wagon gave a very quiet creek under Seto’s fingers. He hadn’t realized that he had tightened his grip. Damn. Maybe he should come back when they were all asleep. Though, judging from those canteens he could see by the firelight, they might be far gone already. And again the unbidden thought… _What am I doing here?_

Nothing for it. Seto offered up his prayers to Shai, god of fortune and luck, and darted out from behind the one wagon, past the second, and slipped in front of the door to the third. _They can’t see me. They’re in the light of the fire. I’m in the dark. At best they might be able to make her out. But probably not. Hopefully not. Not through the firelight._ It all happened over a matter of heartbeats. As his thoughts raced, so did his fingers. As the lock sprang open, over the roaring of his own pounding blood, an awed “Who are you?” trickled in through his ears. He looked up, still through the closed door, and his mouth went dry.

 _Blue eyes… She has blue eyes._ They shone through the bars.

Jerkily, he pulled the door of the wagon open, feeling almost heady satisfaction at having the power to pull her prison from her. “Come,” he said, not even remembering her initial question. He reached into her cell, grabbed her by her upper arms, and half guided, half dragged her out.

She was numb with cold. Her legs buckled beneath her at the sudden office of her weight, and her skin was like ice against his fingers. Without even thinking, he pulled her against him, wrapped his arms fully around her, trying to share his warmth.

It was strange… It was as if they didn’t need words. Both knew they had to run. Both knew they had to pause. Almost the instant after he wrapped his arms around her, she relaxed into his grip. He felt her shaking breaths against his neck. That alone felt hot. His grip on her tightened.

“Hey! What the hell do you think you’re doing?!” He didn’t have to push her away or tell her what to do. They split apart. He turned to the offender. It was too dark to say, but from his voice Seto would guess that he was one of the two salvers who had been told to “settle down.”

It was like undoing the lock. Just another split second. Nothing special about it. Nothing. This man, as he charged in a drunken rage– all that Seto cared about concerning _this man_ was that he was trying to take what was his, Seto’s. _Mine? What am I thinking?_ He turned the beast’s weight against him and topped him to the ground.

“Run!” It was amazing. Seto’s mind was now a haze. There was a roaring in his ears. The Earth might have ended in that moment for all he knew, and yet nothing had ever been clearer. Nothing had ever felt as real as when he grabbed that pale girl’s hand in his and tore across the dunes to his horse. Nothing was more crisp to the senses than when he grabbed her by her waist and heaved her onto his horse. And, when he climbed in front of her and dug his heels into the creature’s flanks, nothing could have resounded in his heart as violently as when she laced her arms around his torso and gripped hold of him for her life.

They rode.

The din that had started up around the fire melted away. The sand melted away. Everything was gone. Everything, except those arms clenched around him, that form, pressed against his back, and that breathing in his ear. _Get a hold of yourself!_ “Are,” he croaked, his own voice sounding very distant to him, “are they following us?” he asked after some minutes.

His breath caught in his mouth as she shifted to look behind them. “No,” she whispered back. Her voice was like a high note on a reed pipe. Meek, and yet full.

Seto swallowed hard. He needed to get home. His mother would be waiting for him– _had_ been waiting for him Ra knows how long. Behind him he could hear the girl’s white hair cracking against the wind. The arms around his waist tightened. But for those arms he felt his heart might have just crashed out of his chest. Or was it because of those arms? Seto smirked. His mother would understand. She wasn’t like the other women of his village. She was refined. A lady. As if she had come from somewhere better. He and his mother were also well off. How, Seto didn’t know. His father had died in battle years ago. However, his mother only said that they were ‘provided for.’ Which meant… she wouldn’t miss the horse. Seto leaned over the side of the mare and unhooked two of the three wheat sacks that had been the original goal of his ride. Was he imagining the reluctance with which his companion’s fingers scraped across his chest as he pulled himself loose of her? He hardly knew.

“Memphis, the Old Capital, is straight ahead! Just follow that constellation, The Soul of Osiris!” he pointed. He wished his voice would start sounding like his own again. “Then–” why did the words stick in his throat? “make your way back to your own country!” He braced himself against the horse, and hauled himself off. He didn’t see her face close in against his, but suddenly her mouth was by his ear and her windpipe voice filled his mind with “What is your name?” The words whipped out and followed him as he landed in the sand. His throat went dry. That was right. He didn’t know her name either. He might never see her again.

“Seto!” he croaked back at her, even as the horse hurtled her farther and farther from him. “SETO!” he almost screamed, trying to make sure she’d heard.

Then, just when he thought she would not turn, would make no acknowledgment of having heard him, having _not_ heard him, she turned, and waved, her pale scrawny arm flailing against the night sky. “Thank you, Seto! I promise, I will return the favor! Thank you!”

And with that, she was gone.

It was all he could do to keep himself from collapsing then and there on the sand and sleeping through till morning. _Not good. Those slavers might follow our tracks. I need to get back home._ In the village his tracks would mix with all the other tracks of his fellow town’s people. He would be safe in the village.

That was when it caught his eye. The sun. He squinted. No. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be dawn already. It wasn’t _that_ late. And yet… there it was. Dawn must be approaching, for there, along the horizon, between Earth and sky, was the sliver of fiery light that spilled out before the sun like a red carpet. Seto yawned. His mother will have raised half the village if it was already the next day. He was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

Seto rubbed his hand over his face, trying to smear away exhaustion, and looked again to the horizon. He froze. Since when did the sun rise from the northwest? And since when did the horizon… smoke?

It crashed upon him. His village. His village was bright enough to outline the horizon. His village was burning.

“MOTHER!” Forgotten were the two sacks of wheat and forgotten was his fatigue. Seto tore across the sand as fast as his legs could carry him. Once more a haze enveloped him. And there was no delicate girl to offer him a higher clarity. _This isn’t happening._ He scrambled over dunes – _This is not happening_ – leapt off a ledge of sheer rock – _not happening_ – and ran for Ra knows how long.

_THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING!_

Legs aching from the run, his eyes stinging with sweat and sand, Seto was enveloped by the inferno as he tore into the village. “Mother! _Mother!!!_ Where are you!?!” His eyes were a blur of tears and his nose and throat were clogged full of smoke. He had to find his house. Had to find his house!

It was right on the main square… Big… They were well off… The main square… Now a ring of fire. He skidded across the yard. It was untouched! “Mother!” His house was still untouched. Seto lunged forward and was torn back by his collar.

“Hey, you!” Before his blurred vision was suddenly thrust a contorted face, beat red with the heat. It was not a familiar face. He did not know this man. This man had two scars in the shape of a cross on the right side of his bald pate. Why was he stopping Seto from getting to his house? “You’re that brat!” The man shook him violently. Seto’s vision blacked in the heat. “Where’s the girl!?” That voice…

It was the man whom he had toppled at the slavers’ caravan.

 _“Mother!”_ He lost it. “Let me go! _Let me go!”_ He wormed out of the man’s grip and tore blindly for the sanctuary of the house.

“Hold up there!” an arm caught his wrist. Another man. More of the slavers were circling around him now. _It was because of me,_ Seto realized. _They came here and set the village on fire. It’s burning… because of me._

“This your house, boy?” a grey haired slaver almost cooed, sweat dripping off his arm as he lifted a blazing torch from one of the roofs. “What if I…?” He waved it meaningfully.

“No. NO! NO! _NO!!!!”_

“Tell us where the girl is,” muttered his captor’s voice in his ear. Seto felt his arms being bent back. Surly they would snap. But he could see nothing. Only the torch in the old man’s hand. It teetered dangerously close to…

**_“NO!!!”_ **

The grey haired man grinned. It was the wrong answer, though it had not really been an answer at all. He put the torch to the house.

 ** _“MAMA!!!”_** She might not be in the house. Tears streamed down his cheeks. He was choking. Choking on his own breath. He could hear nothing. She might have already escaped. Everything was burning. No longer ‘provided for.’

She had not escaped. Somehow, he knew she had not. Perhaps she was not in the house, but she had not escaped. He had lost everything.

Seto fell to his knees. Everything was swimming. No. Burning. The tears were leaving scorch marks down his nose. “…ma…ma…”

And then there was an explosion as part of the burning town seemed to heave from its foundations and, for the second time that night, Seto thought that dawn had come. There was such a torrent of light above his head.

And then… clarity. There came lucidity once more. His vision cleared, and this time the blur of light took the shape, not of a girl, but of… of a white dragon. The beast flexed its great wings, its white scales mirroring the light of the blaze a thousand times over and turning the red flames into blue reflections.

Seto threw his arms forward to stop his fall. _The slaver let go of my wrists,_ he thought numbly. The roar of the fire had been deafened by the roar of the dragon. Seto turned his head up to stare. Now the screams of the town’s people were taken up again by the slavers.

All was clarity – the shrieks of “monster,” the blistering sand under his fingertips, and the dragon who took on Judgment when no god was moved to action. It reared its head back, and gathered the purest light between its teeth. It then unleashed a searing fury upon the retreating slavers. In years to come Seto would remember every detail of this inferno, this night he lost everything. He would remember the _effect,_ while his subconscious would take from him the _cause._ He could not have the girl. Why recall that she existed? He would probably never see her again. His mind was overwhelmed. 

Seto raised an arm up to protect himself from the new blast of heat. The slavers gave out a final anguished scream. This was a dry, crisp heat. Dry, crisp… Clear.

And then… _Oblivion._


	3. Rent in Half

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seto Kaiba overhears a student, Yugi Mutou, telling his friends that his grandfather is in possession of a rare card. Believing it to be the fourth and final elusive Blue-Eyes White Dragon card that he has sought for so long, Kaiba aims to claim the card by any means. 
> 
> The ruthlessness that he has acquired in the years since his takeover of Kaiba Corp. and overthrow of Gozaburo, mixed with a bitterness at an absence in his life he cannot name, drive Kaiba to a desperate and violent act that will have desperate and violent consequences.

Book I | **Rent in Half**

Duelist Kingdom Arc

Part I

_Seto Kaiba: 18 years old_

_Kisara Pegasus: 16 years old_

**…**

Kaiba watched the light above the elevator move, indicating that the Mutou boy had arrived. Sure enough, as the doors slid open, the pipsqueak brat and his trusty loser patrol spilled into the room. The pipsqueak did not see him, but only his grandfather, sprawled on the floor before them all. “Grandpa!” he cried out, multicolored spikes of hair waving in every direction as he stumbled to the old man in the middle of the room. “Grandpa, are you okay?”

 _Oh yes, he’s just fine. Can’t you tell? That’s why he’s hyperventilating on my floor._ He was going to have to call in the janitors, what with the way the old man was spluttering everywhere.

“Yugi,” Oh? So he could talk now. If only the brat had arrived a few minutes earlier, when Old Man Mutou had been left blubbering nonsense before the holographic beasts Kaiba had set upon him. The senile failure was now muttering about his _Heart of the Cards._ Kaiba had his ear-full of _that_ already. _Tish. Relating a card to a living creature. Ridiculous._ The old man collapsed again. 

“Grandpa!” The boy wailed like a suckling pig. Strange how Kaiba both despised melodramas and yet reveled in them.

Brushing a nonexistent speck of dust off his uniform, Kaiba sighed, pushed himself off the door frame, and stepped into the light. “So, how’s the old man feeling, mh?”

_Oh the indignation that ripples through the crowed. **Villain music** if you please, Maestro. _

“Kaiba!” One of Yugi’s cohort cried out. It was the blond boy who had wanted to ‘play Duel Monsters together.’ Yes, he was definitely going to have to call the janitors. “You sleaze, what have you done to him?!”

 _We danced the waltz. Isn’t it obvious?_ Kaiba’s smirk widened. “We had a duel, that’s all, with each of us putting up our most valuable card as the prize.” It was actually a very good idea, really. He would have to store it away in his memory for when he decided to host a Duel Monsters tournament – one of the many things he had always dreamed of and which he could now accomplish with money and influence at his fingertips. “But,” he shrugged – _Look how remorseful I am –_ “I guess playing against a champion like myself was just too much stimulation for the old fool.”

“Kaiba!” The girl of the group now howled out his name and threw her arm out at him, pointing, as if to pronounce everlasting damnation! _It’s a finger. Help._ “You should be ashamed of yourself!”

… Wow. _Wow._ Now _there_ was a statement.

“It was fair.” He shrugged, reaching his hand into his pocket. _Heart of the Cards. Give me a break._ “And look,” It was true, he loved this card better than any other. _But to attribute it human qualities…_

Those eyes, looking at him through the bars of… of what?

 _…Ridiculous._ Four cards. Only three allowed in a person’s deck. He was eighteen now, and had long overthrown his beast of a stepfather and taken his place as CEO of _KaibaCorp._ And hadn’t she promised to protect him? It was 1996 now. He had waited years. Millennia. She had never fulfilled that promise. Broken it! He felt no regrets at taking what was owed him. No regrets about kidnapping this old man and practically wrestling this last card from his quivering fingers. And hadn’t he once given up _everything_ for her? Watched it burn to _nothing?_

_Millennia? …Nothing? …Everything?…Had he? …When?…_

_…‘Her?’…_

“Look,” he said loudly, overriding his own thoughts, “at the sweet prize I won.” Almost convulsively, he jerked the _Blue-Eyes White Dragon_ card from his pocket, and tore it in half before their eyes.

**…**

Kisara kept her gaze fixed on the red-carpeted staircase before her as she ascended, one hand loose on the railing. She was chewing on the inside of her cheek, thinking. Something was strange. Her father had been uneasy lately. More so than usual. He was always giddy, but now there was almost something… sinister about his actions. Giddy, sometimes sorrowful, and sometimes _alarming,_ he had never been sinister. But now… It was as if he was a tiger waiting in the brush. Crouched… tense… eager. 

She shook her head, trying to rid herself of such thoughts. Two strands of her hair tousled free and flopped before her eyes. She sighed, still climbing the stairs, and took her hand off the railing to tuck the strands behind her ear again. _No matter what I do they always, **always** fall back in front–_

She was rent in half.

That was what it felt like. It was as if some giant arm had taken her in hand, and twisted, as if she was nothing but paper. She did not know if her foot landed on the next step. The searing pain tore through her sides. Her sight turned to white fire. It was as if her legs were cleaved from her torso. Her back arched, her hair splayed, her blue eyes, sightless, stood wide with pain and fear, and from her throat was wrenched so anguished a scream that everyone in the castle – everyone save one individual, calmly sipping wine in his chambers – was shaken to the bone and chilled to the heart. Such a scream _… it was not human._

Kisara collapsed in a heap at the bottom of the stairs, her body still whole. Her soul, however, ripped in half.

“So,” Pegasus swiveled the wine in his glass thoughtfully. “It begins.” Now all he needed was to hear Croquet’s report on the outcome of Kaiba and Yugi-boy’s duel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustration of Kisara as Kaiba rends the BEWD card in half: [SetoKisa Week 1. Day 3. "Please Forgive Me."](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/622116137578217473/waifine-september-22nd-day-3-please-forgive)


	4. Remembered Too Late

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Years have passed since a young Seto risked everything to save a white haired girl from a band of slavers. He has risen through the ranks of Egyptian society. Has become a High Priest. And his wold is shaken to its foundations once more when he again meets the white haired girl. Still nameless. Still unforgettable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this story the reign of Pharaoh Atem will take place in the New Kingdom era of Ancient Egypt, during the 19th Dynasty. It will be after the reign of Ramesses II and reign of Merneptah, and before the reign of Seti II. Technically Merneptah reigns from 1213 to 1203 BC. However, for the purpose of this story we will consider Merneptah’s reign to end at the beginning of 1201 BC, leaving up to two years for the short but significant reign of Atem. We shall also consider Merneptah’s reign synonymous with that of Atem’s father, Aknamkanon, and Seti’s synonymous with that of Seto’s, who takes the throne after Atem.
> 
> Aknamkanon has been entombed. Atem has been crowned, and has just begun to acclimate to the grief of losing a father and the strain of leading a kingdom. The events of the Memory Arc take place midway through the year 1201 BC.

Book I | **Remembered Too Late**

Memory Arc

Part II

_High Priest Seto: 20 years old_

_The Lady of the White Dragon: 18 years old_

**…**

Mahad was no more.

Seto rubbed his fingers against his temples, trying to keep down the headache. The jostling of the litter in which he was being carried and the Egyptian heat weren’t helping any.

Was Seto grieving though? Really? Not really, no. Mahad had been a brat raised to his position by birthright. Any of the talent that he had naturally had as a magician had been so blown out of proportion by pampering tutors and student-friendly environments that any of his own worth had been smothered in the process. It was no wonder he had cracked under his first real battle. And the way Mahad had always been so _eager_ to be loyal and had always been so _eager_ to please. It had been revolting. One could be loyal to the Pharaoh without licking his throne every other minute.

Pathetic.

No, Seto did not feel any remorse at the loss of Mahad. The Ring, however, was another matter. Mahad, one of the Seven Guardians of the Pharaoh, apart from his own life, had lost the Millennium Ring to Bakura. Now the Guardians were not only fighting the most skilled and ruthless killer in the land, but the same man, with a weapon on par with their own Millennium Items. Damn Mahad for his foolishness!

Seto looked over at Shada, who was in a litter right next to his own. The street down which they were being carried was relatively quiet, for Thebes anyway, the townspeople all bowing as they passed. However, Seto could still hear the hustle and bustle of market life just one street down. It was so strange sometimes… That had been his own world for so long. And now it was always, always a street away…

Shada looked saddened. _He_ felt the loss of Mahad. Seto studied him for a moment out of the corner of his eye. Now that he thought about it, _everyone_ was touched by the loss but himself. The Pharaoh had seemed as if he might disintegrate into his thrown when the news reached him, so devastated did he look. He had leapt on a horse and galloped to the site were the stone plaque stood, as if Loss were at his own heels, rather than at those of the fallen magician. To the Pharaoh, Mahad had been, aside from his royal adviser, his childhood friend. His closest friend. Then there was Mana, that annoying apprentice of Mahad’s. She first sobbed a river of tears at the base of that stone tablet into which Mahad’s soul had been etched, clawing at it with her fingers as if she could somehow reach through the granite to her wested master. And then, when she had finally run out of tears… she had become eerily silent. Seto last saw her looking over one of the palace’s many balconies, puffy eyed and soundless.

And as for Isis… well, she acted as though nothing had changed. She had calmly comforted Mana – comforted her in front of that very stone tablet – and had slipped into Mahad’s role of the Pharaoh’s adviser as if she were water being poured into a momentarily empty gap where a rock had been thrown, and ripples had appeared. But only for a moment. She smoothed those rippers out, almost without blinking an eye. As if ripples, rather than desolation, washed over her world – her other half.

…Funny, it had been years since Seto had felt that way for anyone. He had known the pain that Mana was now going through. It had once been seared into him as his world burned around him. Isis… He knew that he would never, ever feel her pain. And he was the better for it.

Seto smirked.

“Seto,” Shada suddenly said, dragging Seto out of his musing. “Do you really believe that Bakura is still alive?” There was a sort of subdued desperation in his voice. As if he could not believe that Mahad had died for nothing.

“That’s a foolish question.” Seto answered in a monotone, shifting to make himself more comfortable in the litter. “That man’s ka rivals in power to that of the gods. You saw it then, didn’t you?” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Shada shudder at the memory of the confrontation between Bakura and the Guardians, back in the throne room, when the Pharaoh had summoned a god. And when Bakura had _survived._ “Mahad died in vain,” he said bluntly. _A dog’s end._ “Moreover, the situation has worsened.”

“The ring?” _Astute, isn’t he._

Seto couldn’t dignify the obvious with more than a nod.

Then, after a pause, “With the Millennium Ring, that man’s power has amplified tenfold, if not more,” he said, scanning the crowd. They had come out here for a reason. “We also must hurry and reinforce our own kas, or else he will become too powerful for us to handle.” Fool that Shada was, Seto still needed him. “Shada, your Millennium Key can see within people’s hearts. You can also see if a person carries a powerful ka. You must help me eliminate the threats!” The harvesting of kas. It was such a delicious, simple plan. In a kingdom of this caliber – no, in a _city_ of this caliber – with all of its corruption and foul play… Shada wouldn’t understand. He hadn’t been brought up in it. He hadn’t fought through it to get where he was.

Seto knew. Seto had. And here he was now. In Thebes, the capital of the greatest kingdom ever known to man, the combined land of Upper and Lower Egypt. On a litter, carried about above the lot of them. He sometimes had to wonder – what was the actual worth of being honored and respected by the sort of scum over whom he now had power?

“You can’t be serious!” Shada blustered. Tish. Typical. “We can’t examine the hearts of innocent people!” _…Innocent?_ Did he really just say _innocent?_ How absolutely laughable. “Looking into someone’s heart is a crime! Not even a priest can do it!” He had not expected Shada to understand. Even his mentor, Akhenaden, had resisted and advised against the actions he, Seto, now planned to take.

 _Can?_ What a funny word. _Will_ was the only thing stopping the priests from doing anything. They had the power to do anything they liked. _We **can** do anything. But the other Guardians… they **will** do nothing._ Unlike Bakura. Unlike himself.

Seto had fought his entire life to lift himself from the mire and into the glittering, shining world to which he now belonged. He would not allow that world to crumble to muck around him. Did they not understand? Without action, the bricks that had been baked into those royal fineries would oh so easily crumple back into the dust from whence they came. Seto knew. He had seen it.

That was what the Pharaoh represented to him. The Pharaoh was that symbol of betterment that Seto had fought all his life to reach. The Pharaoh was something to be protected. Something not damaged by the pettiness of life. He was Ra. He was the Sun. An ideal.

An ideal that Seto had given his life to protecting. Could any of the other Guardians claim as much? Could any of them put into such certain words that which they simply called ‘loyalty?’

 _“Listen,”_ he said. It was not a request. It was a command. “From now on, we will not only be fighting Bakura, but the Millennium Ring as well.” Again Shada winced. _Yes, know it to be true you soft hearted man. Mahad’s weapon – the one you have seen him carry and cherish all of his life – may very well be the cause of your, or my, end. That is the price to be paid for Mahad’s foolishness, and your own._ “Do you think we can oppose it? And do you think another like him might not rise and threaten this country if we do not harvest his evil soul now? Do you think the Guardians have the power to oppose such a threat?” A Millennium Item, in the hands of one who _would,_ as well as _could,_ do anything he must do to achieve his end?

Shada opened his mouth to protest, but Seto cut him off. “Also, if the Pharaoh is put into danger once more do you plan on relying on the gods’ power again?”

The words died on Shada’s lips. A smirk twitched upon Seto’s.

“Halt!” he called out, turning from his fellow to the guards carrying his litter. With a jolt, the procession stopped, and Seto jumped from his seat. The dust rose under his feet as he landed. A small, nettling voice in the back of his mind would forever tell him that it was here, in the dust, that he belonged. Not there, on a litter, protecting so high a cause as the Pharaoh.

However, one look at Shada assured him that he was hardly one to think himself unworthy of his station. “Shada,” he said flatly, meeting the man’s eyes. “Mahad’s actions were foolish.” He could just see the muscle twitch in Shada’s jaw at those words. Still, the man kept his peace. “However, we cannot simply rely on the gods alone. Bakura can challenge them. They are not reliable.” The gods had never been reliable in Seto’s eyes. Everything he was, he was because of his own merit. No god had ever helped him.

_None, except for…_

He turned sharply to the guards not carrying the litters who had come from the palace with himself and Shada. “Bring here any person that seems suspicious! Whether it be in clothes, appearance or race! Arrest all those who refuse to leave their dwellings! This is all to protect the Pharaoh!”

The men saluted him, and dispersed. Authority would bring peace to this world. _Stone tablets are nothing when compared to the ruthlessness of the common man’s justice._

Seto knew it would have been foolish to order them to first look within their own hearts, and see if they were really in a position to pass judgment upon their fellow men.

**…**

“Let go!” The howl overrode the pious silence around them and the sound of hustle and bustle just one street away. “Let go of me, DAMNIT!” The guards wrestled yet another resisting man to the ground.

“Lord Seto, we found this exiled criminal in the bar!” One of the guards gasped out, still holding down their prisoner. Two other guards slid the butts of their spears under the struggling man’s chin, and raised his face to Seto’s, and the man actually met Seto’s eyes.

_Consider yourself lucky, scum. Other men have died for less than looking up into my face. Then again, you still may._

Seto smirked. “Heh. An exile?” His eyes were sunken, and were dried like raisins. And yet, they seemed bottomless. The man on the ground still wore the ball and chain with which the exiled from the city were branded. Such men were blindfolded and driven out in a wagon to the farthest reaches of the dessert, far from the Nile. There were they deposited, and left to die. Such was their punishment. To have made it all the way back to Thebes… This miserable wretch might yet have some potential in him. “Shada, search for this man’s ka.”

Hesitantly, Shada raised his item to face the man beneath him. “Millennium Key, look into this man’s heart.” The Key shone, creating beams of light between Shada’s closed fingers, and the exile flinched away, not because of any physical pain, but because of an attack that now went far deeper than the skin – to his core.

Rotten core.

“…In this one the ka gives birth to new wicked ideas. It isn’t very strong, but if we leave him alone, he may become corrupted once again.”

“Tish. Just a small-fry?” _So much for having survived the desert._ How… disappointing. Still… _I wonder how much his spirit can grown in response to revenge and hatred. …Well, I suppose you could call it an ‘experiment.’_ “Even if it’s only one in ten thousand… Take him away to the underground prison!”

“Yes, sir!”

“P-please wait! I just crawled in from the desert today! I just wanted a drink in the bar! That’s all I wanted! To make a toast to Shezmu! _I just got back!_ How could I be a sinful man beyond redemption!?”

“From the moment the new evil ka was born, your fate was sealed,” Seto said coolly. “And as for making a toast to Shezmu– don’t act too indignant, when the god of wine is also the go of blood… and execution.” _This is what becomes of men without purpose. Men who do not know a cause worth fighting for to purify themselves._

“Got it?” Seto spoke to the soldiers around him. “We limit ourselves to criminals,” he had begun to narrow his field. He was getting a feel for this harvesting of souls. “But sink your teeth into them without mercy!”

“Yes sir!”

“NEXT!”

And then Shada twitched. Wonderful. “Ugh, just _stop it,_ Seto! The Pharaoh would never forgive you!”

For a breath of a moment, the thought almost nettled him. Almost. _I don’t need his forgiveness. I need his life. I need him to exist. To be for me a cause to fight for._

“Shada…” He said as patiently as he could. “We need to enforce our authority to protect the kingdom’s structure from rebels! We do not know if there is a second Bakura out there, and we must and will take what precautions we can, both against the present enemy of the state, and any enemies that may surface in the future!”

“This can’t be!” Seto turned to see that the exile he had just sent away had dug his feet into the ground, refusing to be moved. “What you’re flaunting ‘round ain’t _authority!_ If you do this to me, you’ll be _cursed!_ You’ll all be judged by God!” Seto rolled his eyes, and made to turn away. “I saw it with my own eyes!” The man howled, his voice pooling with hysteria. “In the middle of the desert, there was the very incarnation of Ra! A light brighter than the sun! It’s thanks to it that I was able to return to this city alive! That’s right. _The White Dragon appeared!”_

Seto flinches involuntarily, and his eyes snapped back onto the exile. Suddenly, despite the heat of the day, a chill rode through his veins. “What? A… a _white dragon?_ ” The burning village. The heat. The clarity. …All faded in an instance.

And yet… the burn remained.

“It’s true!” the exile blustered, seeing in the Priest’s reaction a hope of survival for himself. _“The White Dragon is in this city!_ It will _definitely_ protect me!”

“White dragon… in this city…” Seto’s throat was very dry.

“When I saw that dragon,” the exile rambled on, “I knew it had answered my prayers! I knew it was a god! I god that actually _heard_ the prayers of mortal men! An’ I swore! I swore I wouldn’t do anything bad, every again! An’ I wanted… I wanted to fly away like that dragon! Oh, I wished I could! But all folks are born in chains! Chain’s called life! Unless you’re beloved by a god, ya ain’t ever free.”

Seto’s head was pounding… With a sharp turn he had his back to the exile. His back to this story, this fantasy! “Let’s go!” He no longer had thoughts for this reprobate. Nor for his lies!

Through the din of his own head he thought he heard Shada call his name.

“WAIT!” The exile’s wail pierced through the muddle in Seto’s mind, even as he walked away. “It’s really the divine punishment! _The White Dragon’s divine punishment!”_

The guards’ threats blurred behind Seto. “How dare you!” “Open your mouth again and we’ll cut off your tongue!” “Lock him up!” Seto continued to walk forward without turning back.

Years later, when Seto sat on the throne in his old age, the kingdom at peace, and his sons and daughters grown, he had to wonder if there had not been some truth in the curse that exile had laid on him all those years ago. If that White Dragon had not indeed been brought into his life as a punishment. A light brighter even than the Pharaoh – than Ra. The light he would never be able to touch, but which had touched him so entirely that he would feel her scorch on his lips for the rest of his life – no, for the rest of Time.

_Divine Punishment._

**…**

With a yelp she collapsed on the ground. Her legs just… couldn’t hold her anymore. She tried to twitch. _Move. **Move.**_ A rock bit into her shoulder. She twitched. And that was all. When all else failed her, her legs had always been there to carry her away. She could _always_ run away. But not today. Then again… _Why?_ _Why do I still keep running?_

One, two, three more rocks cut into her. _Ah._ _What’s why._ Even if she knew it was for nothing, she would run from pain. Was that normal? For people to run from pain, knowing as they do that it will only lead them into more pain? The rocks. Her head, her back, her leg. _Why? Why do they keep doing that?_ Doing what? Running? Or causing people to run? Which do people do more frequently?

“Get out of this city!” Oh. Why wouldn’t her fingers move? “You won’t swindle water out of us!” Broken?

 _…all I wanted was some water._ She knew this was desert land. She knew that the Nile had three cycles in each year – one of inundation, one of planting, and one of harvest. It was harvest now, and the waters had receded some. The crocodiles lounged on the banks in thicker droves, and water was a little harder to draw. But she just… she couldn’t go into the river herself. She couldn’t. Not again. Not that raging torrent. Not again.

“This woman is unmistakably a witch!”

 _Oh, don’t I know it._ The rocks pummeled down on her. She hardly felt them.

“You’re a bad omen!”

Yet they kept falling. Crushing her. Like the water. Like the torrent.

“…ow…” She twitched again. And then stopped. She stopped herself. _I will not run. Anymore._ Hadn’t she already promised herself that once many, many years ago? For all the good it ever did her. _That’s not true,_ she flinched, almost as if she flinched at her own attempt to justify herself, rather than at the rainstorm of rocks. _That’s not true. Once you did not run away. One time in your life you kept your promise. The time you saved that boy. You saved the boy named…‘Seto.’_

 _No,_ the truth in her soul answered. _You killed him. You killed his family. You killed his village. You slaughtered them all in cold blood. As you once did to your own family and your own home._

“That’s right!” The mob around her all agreed. “That’s right!” They roared on and on and around her like waves. They were a blur around her. The rocks. One hit her along the face. Her eye. Everything blurred.

She whimpered. _Why do I still have the strength to whimper?_ Surly… surly the strength to run away would be the last strength to leave her.

“Look, get the troops over here!” The troops? Was she to be punished? _Took them long enough._ But no. No, she could not abide pain. _Abide pain? I live naught but pain._

_…and I deserve it all._

“This woman is a witch!” If everyone said so, then it must be true.

“Her skin is pale!” True. Though once upon a time that was not a strange thing. Not where she had come from.

“And her eyes are light blue!” True again.

“She’s a disaster!” _All. True._

Her breathing. Why was it so hard to breathe? It was like something was crushing down on her. Like the water… the water was crushing down on her… again. Her eyes went wild, and everything was a sea of dust. _What do I do?_

“Dun’ look in her eyes! She’ll curse you!” A boy shoved his playmate back, further into the crowd. He grasped at a scarab amulet around his neck. A token to ward off evil spirits. The child spit into the sand.

_No, little boys. I only have one soul to sell…_

“That’s so scary bro!”

She smiled, and her teeth scraped the dust. Brothers, eh? Siblings. What a… beautiful, terrible bond. She… she had once… had… once…

The water.

She needed to get… get to them. Get to her through the water!

_…MOVE!_

She convulsed and, as every ounce of flesh bone and blood left searing pain, she raised herself onto her elbows, and surveyed the mob that was her just deserts. “Please…” she reached an arm out. _I need to get to them._ Her throat was so dry. Her head was spinning. Why had she come here again? She couldn’t remember. All she knew was that she needed to get to them! Needed to get to them through the… “…water…” She tried to swallow, and if she’d had any food in her at the time, now she would have given it up. _Oh, how the world is **spinning!**_ “I promise I’ll leave…”

 _I would never burden you with my curse as well. I would never damn your siblings, your families, your homes…_ As if she had ever been able to keep a promise in her entire life.

“There!” The water that the man smashed into her face from the confines of a bucket was more terrible, more painful and more horrifying to her senses than any amount of rocks could ever have been. Her mind and body reeled as one. “Happy now? Now get the hell out!”

Back into the dust she collapsed.

**…**

He had decided to walk for a while. The litter was cramped and irritating and he needed to walk. It made no difference to him if Shada gave him strange glances. The villagers fell upon their knees regardless. They payed homage to the litter in which he was carried and the position that he held; not to the man that he was. 

_This would be a very twisted city indeed if men, women and children payed homage to one such as **me.**_ He smirked.

The first thing he noticed as he turned onto a new street was that everyone in sight did not fall and pay homage in one wave. They were preoccupied, as a pack of unruly hounds that is preoccupied with a plaything will not notice or take heed of its master approaching. 

Seto smirked. He did not need Shada’s Key to tell that this mob was rife with corrupted degenerates. At an easy pace he began to approach, savoring in their obliviousness to his presence. It was too delightful. And look. Two small ragged children, one wearing a scarab charm. He wondered… how great were the kas in their souls? Could a charm protect from one’s own darkness? Seto always laughed when his fellow Guardians exalted the innocents of children. What a funny little lie! Children were vile, greedy little monsters. They cared for nothing and no one. If anything, they were more horrid than adults, some of whom at least had learned to curb their viler natures.

He ought to know. He had been a child once.

One of the two boys, the older one, turned around momentarily, and saw him. A spasm of fear crossed the child’s face, as if he knew that Seto could see right into him.

 _And I can._ Seto’s dark smile curled into a darker smirk.

The boy grabbed his smaller companion by the arm, whispered something in his ear, and shot from the mob and from Seto as if he had been burned, dragging his little brother after.

_Such an intuitive little piece of sh–_

The gap that the two boys left in the crowd was a small one. Hardly the breadth of a man. But through that gap Seto saw a streak of white hair tinged red in the dirt of the street.

Roaring filled his ears and clarity broke through his vision at the one glimpse of her. 

_…again?..._

“WHAT’S GOING ON HERE?!”

A hush fell upon the crowd as they all, quite shamelessly, turned to look him in the face. No bowing. No falling to their knees. Oh, but he almost preferred it. The feeling of resentment and fear that rippled raw through the street was so much more tangible than all of that kowtowing. And then the silence was broken by a particularly astute individual. He laughed out loud, as if proud of his actions. Proud that the highest men in the realm could see them.

Another cried out, just as astutely, “Hey, it’s the priests!”

 _…My, oh my. Do the crowds go **wild.** _Seto’s mouth curled again. Only, rather than his usual smirk, he could feel his own face shaping more into the form of… _a snarl._ Steadily he approached the crowd, and they did indeed make room for him like pets for their master. Finally, when he got to the mob’s heart, he saw her in full. He looked at her for a long moment. There was enough space about her to show that none had dared to get too close. Seto could see nothing of her face. It was entirely covered by a long mat of white hair. She might have been an old woman, but no. Even in her battered condition, even with the blotches of red that mingled into the sand and spread thin by the water she had been drenched in… he could tell she was not old. No. She was younger than even he. The way her sopping garments held to her… She shifted. Her shoulder blades shuddered and moved like two separate beings, grating against each other beneath her already drenched garment. How thin she was.

Her head was hooded by an extension of her dress. She took in a rattled gasp in the silence – alive at least – and coughed violently. She must have breathed in sand. Her entire frame rocked with the force, and she turned her head to the side to cough out the debris. She stopped. Her mouth still quivered. But nothing else. Her body became still, as a mouse became still when it knew it was under the keen eye of a hawk. All was still in the crowd. All was still as the Priest fixed his eyes upon this creature. Nothing moved.

Nothing, but the girl’s own eye beneath one half-opened, battered eyelid. With a sudden jolt it turned its vague stare from the dirt – and returned Seto’s piercing stare with her own.

He blanched.

To the shock of all present the disgusted look that had been fixed on Priest Seto’s face for the last many moments did not remain on the girl, but turned to the crowd about him. “What have you disgraces done to this girl!” Had it been another time, another place, Seto might very well have sneered at such an obvious question. Had it come from someone else. Because of something else. As it was, his anger was beyond his usual cool and supercilious demeanor. It _boiled._ He felt… _livid._ “You threw rocks at a defenseless woman?!” He unleashed, just as Shada caught up to him with his own guards. Why? What of it? Even as he shouted Seto’s own logic attempted to keep pace with him. Women were beaten, killed and ravaged every day. Why did this one matter? Was it because he actually saw her? Did she remind him of his wasted mother? Yes. Her end, gruesome and terrible as it was, would forever sit heavy in his heart. But no…No. His reaction now was nothing so logical.

“I SHOULD HAVE YOU **_ALL_** CASTRATED FOR THIS FELONY!” He was positively spitting at them. His face was red. His body trembled. How dare they! How _dare_ they! And after he had promised to _protect her!_ After he had sworn his sword into her service!

 _…What?...When?_ His own thoughts confused him.

“Well…” One man tried to splutter an excuse from the crowd. “See…” faltered another. “No!” Pleaded a third. And then, one further still cried out, “Please, we’re sorry!” All fell still, as if even his fellow scum knew the last man had taken the apologies too far. Seto turned his back on them. For the moment.

“Give her water!” he hissed to his guards. He caught the shocked expression on Shada’s face. Shocked at the scene before him? Seto doubted it. No. He was shocked at Seto. Even Guardians with their attuned sense of _justice_ rarely reacted with such open temper. They were bred for higher things. They had been bred in nobler atmospheres. Well, not Seto.

“…Yes sir.” One of the attendants of the Priests reached for the leather pouch that contained Seto’s water. Whenever the priests went out about the city they went with refreshments. Fresh and dried fruits, wine, and of course, water. However, it had only been brought in supplies for the two Priests. So, of course, it was Seto’s personal camel skin pouch that the attendant brought forth. …Why was it that Seto took note of that?

All too hesitantly the attendant approached the woman. He was scared. He was like the rest of them. Seto should have him flogged! It was everything Seto could do to not wrench the pouch out of the stupid man’s hands, and help her himself. Could the fool not see how desperately she needed it?

The attendant knelt in the ground next to the fallen woman and, pausing for only a moment longer, reached out to try and bring her to a sitting position. Seto did everything he could to control the spasm that came over him as this other man touched her. How he turned her over, all the while keeping her as much at arm’s length as he could. How her head rolled back and lolled on his shoulder and how he, insolent idiot that he was, had the gall to flinch away.

…How… how her hood fell back, and fully exposed the mane of long white hair that now pooled from her head to the sand. How they all gasped. Those fools! And how Seto inhaled sharply at the sight of that pale arching neck, so slender, so beautiful.

He blinked in irritation. Where did such thoughts come from?

As he watched, Seto observed with well contained shock how… how severed this girl really was, even from herself. When the attendant tried to bring her to a sitting position by supporting her back, her entire body, as a body should, did not come up with his supporting arm. Rather, neither shoulder seemed to be connected to the other. Nor either connected to her head. It took a full minute for the man to prop her up completely, and keep her so. Watched closely by Seto’s piercing gaze, the attendant lifted the camel pouch to her lips – **_my_** _camel pouch_ – and, after a moment of the water trickling down the side of her mouth, Seto saw her throat begin to work, and she swallowed, and again, and again, and coughed.

The attendant pulled the pouch away from her mouth so that she might cough freely. Her head lolled back onto his shoulder, her eyes fluttered open for a moment and, so quietly Seto almost missed it, she whispered, “…Thank you…so much…” The sound of a reed pipe. Her eyes slipped closed, and she fell limp once more.

Seto blinked at the girl. She had an accent. Not a strong one, but it was there. And she was polite. Curious. And then… jealousy pricked him. To whom had she given her thanks? Surly not to the ingrate who had given her water against his better judgment. Surely it had been to him, Seto! Surly she had seen him in those few moments of revival!

The attendant, however, had clearly thought the thank you had been directed at himself. Seto watched with immediate annoyance at the way the man’s features softened toward the girl in his arms. “Sir, she’s very weak,” he offered out loud. How strange, that with one phrase of gratitude this girl had turned the man’s utter fear… to genuine concern.

Once more Seto’s face curled into a snarl at this… this _fickle_ man. “Then make sure to be particularly careful with her.” What was he doing? Why was he reacting like this? It was mad.

“What’s wrong, Seto?” Shada had stepped up beside him, placed a hand on his shoulder, and whispered urgently his concern.

Seto slowly turned his eyes upon his fellow Guardian. His gaze was scathing. _Take a good look at the scene played out before you. If you still see nothing wrong, let me know, and I might just castrate you too._

He may very well have said as much, had not Shada flinched away from him, as if he had been scorched. “What this?!” There was an actual look of alarm on his face, and he pulled forth this Millennium Key, even as he stumbled back.

“What’s wrong, Shada?” Seto now echoed back at his fellow Guardian, only he made no pretense at concern. His voice was raw with excitement. Had Shada picked up the power of a criminal ka from among the crowd? No. No… he had raised the key… toward the girl.

“This woman’s ka…” Shada gasped, the Millennium Item now clearly vibrating in his hand. “I can’t measure it! It’s too powerful!”

_What!?_

“I can see– I can see the ka…. Inside her heart…” The Millennium Key was shaking so violently in his grasp that Seto was actually worried Shada would drop the thing. “It has tremendous power hidden deep inside her! It’s… it’s a _white dragon!”_

Somewhere, something inside of Seto…broke. Or…was it reset? … _A white dragon?_ Seto blinked, and stared mutely ahead, not looking at Shada. Not looking at the girl. His glazed stare only tore away when, rather than letting the Key fall from his hands, Shada screamed and fell to his knees, himself overpowered by the very presence, dormant though it seemed to be, of the girl’s ka.

“Shada!” Seto blanched. His fellow had sooner collapsed than relinquished his Millennium Item. Perhaps there were some Guardian instinct in him yet. 

“To think that there was someone… with such a latent ka!” Shada panted, clutching at his knees with his shaking hands. Sweat was pooling down the sides of his head, and his eyes were fixed on the girl. …The girl.

“What?” Seto asked, slightly dazed now. _In this woman, a powerful ka?_ He too now turned to look at her. The still damp clothing. The arching, alabaster throat. That cascading mane of white hair. Those lips, gently parted, even now as she took in one after another ragged breath – clinging to life. So weak. So… What were _these thoughts!?_ Seto sneered, this time at himself.

 _So awesome a ka… If I can extract her ka it’d be possible to increase my authoritative power over the kingdom_. Then he would be able to do what must be done, with no interference from fools like Shada. More power. He needed to have more power if he was to protect this country… and its Ra. Its Sun. Its Pharaoh.

“Take this woman at once! Be sure that she has food and water available! That’s an order!” He barked, his mind made up. Why not? He had spilled innocent blood before. This would be no different. It would always be spilt. Whether or not he existed. If anything, he would be doing this poor wretch of a girl a favor. He would give her a quick end.

“Yes sir!” saluted one of his guards. “Shall we put her in a prison cell with the others?”

For some reason he could not explain, the feelings from mere moments before flooded back, beyond anything he could control rationally. The very thought of her being alone with all those criminals … the thought alone made his blood boil. Why? _“…No,”_ he said more forcibly than perhaps he should have, “give her a room in the palace, so that she can get plenty of rest.” … _After all, I don’t want her damaged. And I did promise a **quick** end. _

He looked about himself. Many of the culprits of the beating had made a quiet escape of the crowd. But the same token, many curious onlookers had joined it. It was time to end this little melodrama. Seto turned to his soldiers with his old smirk. Time for a little game of cat and mouse. “Search for more people with evil kas! And let all those who are present here be imprisoned!” With a multitude of screaming and shoving, the mob dissipated into all directions, the Royal Guard at their heels. Well, that took care of that.

The street became deserted but for Seto, Shada, who was still on his knees, a handful of the Priests’ attendants, and the girl.

It did not take the men long to regroup, but even so Seto began to regret sending them out on wild goose chases to begin with. He no longer cared for the petty criminals they brought him. He had his prize. Finally, when all his men had reassembled, he addressed them again. “No one is to speak of this to the Pharaoh! We do not have the luxury to be as _lenient_ as we were in the past!” He did not want the Pharaoh knowing about her. Did not want anyone to see her blue eyes and fair skin. She was his. Always his.

_…What?_

He ignored the few sidelong glances his guards exchanged. Ignored Shada, who was only now clambering back to his feet, and who himself gave him a sharp look. “Shada, let’s return to the Palace.” Without another word, Seto swept onward, ignoring the litter, his fellow Guardian, his men, and the fact that, out of the corner of his eye he could see as the attendant who had given her water now hauled the girl up. _And the way he wrapped an arm around her waist for support!_ Seto’s knuckled turned white as his grip on the Millennium Rod tightened.

Behind him he could hear the Royal Caller, “The Great Priests are returning to the Palace!”

He could also hear as one of the remaining soldiers called back, “We will stay here and guard the city!”

He could hear it all, but he listened to none of it. His ears and mind were full of a voice as gentle as a reed-pipe’s tune. _“Thank you… so much…”_

**…**

His steps echoed loudly on the stone floor. He had said to give her a private room in the palace. However, there were cells with bars in the Palace as well. Seto doubted that the Pharaoh knew as much. Nor would he ever have to.

The fire from the torchlight crackled. His footsteps echoed on the stone. He turned a corner. There, two guards. Between them… a grated door. Seto squared his shoulders.

“What is the woman’s condition?” he asked, coming to stand between the two men in front of the caged door.

“Lord Seto,” the two guards bowed while one answered for both. They were very large, muscular men. It almost seemed ludicrous to place such a guard on the girl. Almost– had Seto not himself witness Shada collapse to the ground at being in her very presence. While she was yet unconscious. “She is still asleep. The doctor says she will recover with rest.” From such hardship to recover with simply rest? Seto peered through the darkness at her. True, that all of her wounds seemed to have been tended. But no medicine? No constant application of ointments? Had he not known the physicians to be unwaveringly loyal to the Pharaoh and his house, he would have thought them liars. But they would not lie to a Priest. She must be a strong girl, despite her appearance. 

For a moment, a long moment, he peered at her through those bars. Even from here her hair was stark in the darkness. For a moment, as for so many moments before since he had laid eyes on this strange girl only that morning, he wondered why the sight of her… disturbed him so? These bars. He glanced at them briefly. He somehow felt that… that he should be the one removing them, not grating her door with them. _He remembered…_ Seto shook his head. As he had before, whenever he strained his memory so, all that came to flash before his eyes was his mother… and the fire. He needed no such thoughts now. He had never had scruples before on such missions. This would be no different. “Hand me a torch. Unlock the door.”

The door creaked as it opened. He entered with a burning touch and, before coming any closer to the sleeping occupant of the single cot across the room, he kindled the one torch in the room. He then slid the handle of the one he was carrying into an empty holster on the wall. Seto then stood there, for a time, his fingers still on the torch. Finally, he let his hand drop, and turned.

The fires crackled about them. His steps once more echoed on the stone floor. He stood over her. A part of her face had swollen from the beating. His throat tightened. Her body, even the little of it he could see beneath the blanket that now covered her, was completely bandaged. And what was not covered by bandages was visibly bruised. How often had she undergone such treatment? Surly, with her skin and coloring this could be no new occurrence. Not among the _honorable_ people of Egypt. Seto knew their ranks all too well.

Where had she come from? He stared at her in almost inescapable fascination. _Lady of the White Dragon…_ he thought, knowing no other name by which to address her, even in his own thoughts. _How much pain must color your blue eyes before the dragon is released to the heavens?_

He had to harden his resolve. He clenched his fists, even as he gazed upon her beaten form in the firelight. _I **will** make the White Dragon my servant, no matter what… even if I must sacrifice the **life** of its wielder…_ He would let no one stand in his way. And the feelings this girl seemed to bring forth in him… The sooner she was gone, the better. He turned to extinguish the torches. Why had he bothered lighting them to begin with?

_“…Seto…”_

The torch Seto had lifted from its holster clattered to the ground. He felt his world spin. He teetered, and only just managed to throw out his arm before he knocked against the wall. He stared down that the torch at his feet as it spluttered, wafted heat up into his face, and then went out. His mouth was very dry.

 _How did she…? Don’t be a fool! There could be any number of ways! She might have heard Shada addressing you. She… she might have heard one of the guards. She…_ Seto turned. She was asleep. Had she, for a moment, awoken just then? Or had… had his name been spoken in her sleep?

Again he approached her, though much more unsteadily than before. And this time he came closer still. He chanced a furtive glance at the door. _Idiot._ What had he to fear? As if the guards had any say or importance in this matter. The girl was his, after all. His. Priest Seto’s. This woman was his to do with as he pleased. And no one would or could begrudge him. Again his attention returned to… her. Hesitantly he leaned forward and propped his arms on either side of her head, looming over her. And stared. _White hair… blue eyes…_ Seto swallowed. This feeling. Was he ill? _No, my heart has begun…to stir…_ He asked himself then what he already knew. _Do I know this woman?_

The fire. The blistering sand beneath his fingers. The screams of slave traders and townspeople alike. The torrent of burning air mixed in with the ash. _But wait…why had there been slave traders there?_ The wave of unendurable heat. **_“MAMA!”_** The roar. The Dragon.

The Girl.

Slowly, shakily, controlling every joint in his body lest it just go loose now, he set himself on the ground by her bed. If he had not, he would surely have collapsed on top of her. Instead, he stared blankly at nothing, one hand clamped over his mouth, his eyes wide, fighting back the impulse to be sick as the long suppressed memories of five years past crashed upon him afresh.

It had all been for her. He had lost everything that night… for this _… this very girl._ He chanced a glance at her. Whatever vague emotions he had been attempting to stifle earlier were now far beyond his control or comprehension. All he could do was sit shaking on the stone floor of her cell. What could he feel? Anger? But for this girl, his mother might still be alive, along with the score of other people of his village. Gratitude? But for this girl, he would not have survived the wrath of the slavers. Joy? But for this girl… this girl, who had been so precious to him upon first sight, when he was still young and new to this world…. He had long since lost the ability to so quickly see through truths and lies. She… she was a relic of a time before he had lost… everything. He had believed in her. In one night, for one night, he had given her his trust, his aid, his…affection. That capacity to recognize and appreciate things for what they were, Seto had lost. Yet she… she was still here.

 _That’s right… this woman… is from then…_ Swallowing did nothing for his parched throat. …And she had whispered his name. She remembered his name. _She is from then… as is the white dragon._ With a trembling hand, he reached out and touched her unbruised cheek. He clumsily scrambled to his knees for a better look at her, cupping his hand to her face with more ease. Gently, he turned her face more towards his. Her eyelids fluttered, but did not part. Her eyelashes were as white as her hair. What a curiosity. What a _beautiful_ curiosity. She knew his name. Had recognized him after all these years. Yet he still did not know her name.

He could have laughed then. After all this, he still did not know what to call this apparition! His laughter caught in his breath.

With a soft sigh, she pressed her face more firmly into his hand. Seto was certain his heart would burst from his chest. One white strand of hair fell from behind her ear to strewn across her face. Almost without thought Seto tucked it behind her ear. Again, it took its unruly course. Seto… almost smiled.

And then frowned. He looked about the chamber. At the torches, one lit and one smoldering. At the stone cell, bereft of all but this cot. At the bars. The guards. Once he had been her liberator.

Now he had become her captor.

 _By the mercy of Ra, Lady of the White Dragon…_ he thought, looking back to her sleeping face. _What have I done in bringing you here?_

Elsewhere in Palace compound an unearthly scream wrenched through the air, as the Thief King Bakura, having circumnavigated all of the defenses, took vengeance on his old acquaintance and Seto’s mentor – High Priest Akhenaden.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustration of the future Seto & Kisara never had: [SetoKisa Week 1. Day 7. “The Land of What Might Have Been.”](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/622921545473474560/waifine-september-26th-day-7-the-land-of-what)
> 
> Illustration of the old age Seto & Kisara never shared: [SetoKisa Week 2. Day 8. “AU where Kisara lives.”](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/622921903719481344/waifine-november-7th-day-8-au-where-kisara)


	5. What Luxury

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Seto Kaiba deals with the repercussions of losing his title of Duel Monsters' Champion to the up and coming dark horse Yugi Mutou, Kisara Pegasus starts awake for the first time since Kaiba ripped the Blue-Eyes White Dragon card in two, a brace fastened around her torso against the horrible welt that has there appeared.

Book I | **What Luxury**

Duelist Kingdom Arc

Part II

_Seto Kaiba: 18 years old_

_Kisara Pegasus: 16 years old_

**_…_ **

Kisara woke with a gasp. She blinked at the ceiling for a few moments, and then groaned as the pain, which had briefly left her in sleep, now returned to her in full force, as if it realized she would be able to now appreciate it, awake as she was. She tossed her head to the side. Those rocks… so many of them… from everywhere… the sand in her mouth… The shouting!... The way they all leered at her… The water… she… they… him…

Again, she opened her eyes, and found herself staring at her own, pale blue, William Morris Wallpaper. She blinked. _Rocks?_ Had she been dreaming? _No… No…_ She had been attacked. Hurt. And then… She had woken up to find…

Barely daring to touch her torso, she fidgeted beneath the covers of her bed. As if in affirmation to her curiosity a shooting pain racked from her right shoulder, down to her left hip, and then coursed across her back, as if she wore a sash of pain. Kisara let out a wheeze. The pain cleared her head a little. _What rocks?_ What delirium had she been in? This pain…This was…

Kisara swallowed. She had been walking up the stairs and then… She closed her eyes, and groaned softly to the empty room. Her bedroom. What was happening to her? She didn’t know how long she lay there. How long she had lain there. The curtains were drawn. Her clock was on her bedside table, which would have been fine, if it had not necessitated every muscle in her back to twist into position to see it. Delirious, pained, tried and confused, she wafted in and out of dreams and realities. _…But which are which?_

She didn’t know how many hours she lay there. Hours? Days? It all blurred together. This was all so strange. It wasn’t that Kisara hadn’t had lapses in memory before. False dreams. It was the reason she was so afraid of water. Both her father and Croquet had tried again and again to take her swimming in the lagoons around the island. But it was always to no avail. Kisara could swim as naturally as though she was born on an island. But she never ventured into deep water.

Strange dreams, déjà vu, half-thoughts that were almost memories – these were all too familiar to Kisara. Her father had often said she had an imaginative mind, and an imaginative mind could not help but wander. … But this was different. It was as though someone had torn a hole in the fabric of her consciousness– her very soul. A dam had come down, and she could not keep the flood at bay any longer.

A thousand images flooded her thoughts. Was this the delirium? Was she hallucinating? She could make sense of none of it. Different places, different times, nothing stayed the same. There seemed to be only one constant. One face that appeared over and over again, each time of a different race and era, but familiar in his constancy and in his ever-piercing blue eyes. _“…Seto…”_ The moment the name was out of her mouth Kisara blanched with her own embarrassment. Where had that come from? She closed her eyes momentarily, trying to burn the shame out of her throat. Why did she turn to him? Was it because he had once saved her? Was it because he had refused to see her since? How many years was it now? Decades? Centuries?

_Millennia?_

Even if Seto Kaiba had never intentionally avoided her, he had never intentionally sought her out either. And then there had been the Intercontinental Duel Monsters Tournament, a year ago. One of the most humiliating experiences in her memory. The way he had _looked_ at her. What an idiot she had been then. No. He had saved her. And then abandoned her… to her dreams. She was such a weak little fool. Now her one consolation on the matter of Kaiba was that she never _had_ run into him again, and never _had_ managed to make any more of a fool of herself than that day through the bars, so long ago.

_So long… ago…_

Kisara was so tired. The pain exhausted her, even in her moments of wakefulness. And she still didn’t know what time it was or how long she had been there. Why had no one come? Indeed, why wasn’t she in the hospital wing? Why… what was happening?

And Kisara dreamed. And in dreams, _remembered._

Again, she was walking up that staircase, and again the pain rent through her. Only this time, she had time. Time, as she fell through the air, to feel all over again the agony as the flesh on her back was ripped, just between her shoulder blades – between the wings. Time, to hear the defining shatter of the scales on her chest as they gnashed against each other, and splintered. Time, as what should have been a final attack, a final beam of white-hot lighting, smoked within her throat, and instead became a pitiful cry. A roar as great in magnitude as the size of the creature from which it was torn. She fell.

Kisara recalled, in a half-dazed state, as she was carried from the scene. As Croquet, her father’s personal bodyguard, and her own longtime mentor, ran to her side as she was laid in her bed. Remembered – no, dreamed – how he held her hand. She convulsed in her bed, as the vision of three dragons swam before her eyes. Three dragons. No. Three mirrors. And in them, three dragons. All destroyed in one blast of power. The pain invaded her dreams.

As she fell back into the bed, so he fell to his knees on the podium, staring at the place where his beloved dragons had been. Why had they failed him? _Because of you! How could you expect me to protect you, three times over, after what you did to me mere moments before!? After you rent me in two!_

Kisara did not know what was dream and what was reality. It all swam before her eyes as one, as if her wound was oozing memories instead of blood. Perhaps they were one and the same. She threw her head back. She felt the pillow against her face but when she opened her eyes all she saw was sand. Did she have a fever?

All she knew was that everything was tinted with William Morris wallpaper.

She blinked. Her bedside lamp had been lit. Not only that, but something had been laid on her bed, judging by the weight on her blankets. She shifted, and let out a low hiss. The pain, again noting that its victim was properly awake, returned with full force. She grit her teeth – _this is going to hurt_ – and wrenched her left arm out from underneath her covers, to fasten around whatever it was that had been left there. Her jaw clenched, her eyes squeezed shut, Kisara’s back arched involuntarily, as if it could so escape the pain. Her nostrils flared, and she exhaled loudly. For the second time, she had to wonder that she had not been sent to the hospital wing. Almost delirious with the pain, she lifted the object to her eyes. And blinked.

It was a brace. It was made of firm plastic, mesh wire, and hospital cloth. An ordinary waist-brace. But why was it here? And then a realization came to her. Kisara looked about her. Not only had her bedside light been turned on, but a tray of food had been placed upon it. She was not going to be sent to the hospital wing. She had been left here alone.

She was alone.

_Again._

Kisara opened her eyes, her mind attempting to catch up to her emotions. Again? Kisara had never had a family before Maximillion Pegasus. As a child, she had been told that a clean-shaven man in a white turban and a cream-colored gown had appeared at the doorsteps of the orphanage with a baby in his arms. Most curious about him, Kisara’s supervisor had said, was the great, gold-plated key he wore around his neck. Of course, she had laughed, it could not have been out of solid gold. To wear such a thing, and in public for no occasion, would have been ridiculous. However, he had not given his name when asked. He had, however, given the baby’s.

Kisara.

Beside this vague description, Kisara had not the vaguest idea of a family. Because of her strange appearance she had never been adopted. Even when searching parents had addressed her they had always found reason to move on to another child quickly. Kisara never blamed them. How could she? Apart from her strange appearance of long white hair and almost unnaturally light blue eyes, Kisara soon became aware that even her outlook and manner of speech was somewhat different from that of other children. She was strange and unpopular. Alongside the physical bullying that accompanied them, such notions only contributed to her quiet nature, her outward sullenness, and the peculiarity of which she was accused.

Until he came.

Kisara had, once again, snuck out of lunch early. This would give her a chance to climb into one of the three trees on the playground, and hide from the other children. A strange observation, but a very useful one, was that people very rarely looked up. And Kisara, who had always been slender and small, could climb to the nie-top of the trees, and remain hidden until the bell rang. It was when, her hands already reaching for the first branch, she had looked about to make certain that none of the councilors had seen her–

–that she saw him.

Standing tall, hardly blinking, next to that limousine that appeared so shiny, he looked absolutely miserable. She knew. She recognized it in herself. No child should have to look so strong as he did. In that very strength, unyielding, he betrayed himself. She stepped away from the tree. She walked towards him, completely without the usual fear and agitation with which she normally approached other children.

She reached the bars, and wrapped her hands around them. “Hey,” she called out quietly, sucking in her lower lip, which an older boy had broken on her a day earlier when he had shoved her face into a wall.

And when the boy by the limousine looked up at her, Kisara knew for certain: _His scowl was just as hollow as her smile. For inside, they were both screaming in pain._

Again, Kisara blinked at the William Morris wallpaper. But… why was this all coming back to her now? And why did she feel such… _fear?_ Even now she could see her own hand – the one which held the brace– _trembling._ Why did she fear for her safety now? And why did she fear for her family? The family she had now had for _six full years._ And why was the pain of such thoughts acute enough that it brought tears to her eyes, as if she was all too familiar with such a pain. Surly, while Kisara had gone through many trials at the orphanage, she could at lease claim that she was one orphan who could not remember being orphaned?

She blinked, and the tears rolled down her cheeks. They trickled down the sides of her face, and into her ears, leaving an uncomfortable and salty wetness in their wake.

Her vision blurred. For only a moment, but it was long enough. For only a moment the William Morris disappeared completely. For only a moment she was looking up at the stone ceiling of a one-window cell, where flickering torch fire served as the only light. Kisara convulsed. Gasped. How had she gotten here? All she’d wanted was a drink of water! Wait…what? Blink. William Morris. There was absolutely stillness in the room. Kisara did not dare blink. _What happened to me on that staircase?_ She needed to know. But to whom could she go? Her father? No. Something told her… No. …Then she would just have to go to her father, without going to him. Kisara fixed her eyes on the framed poster of _Dragonheart_ that hung above her desk, on the other side of her room. It was a new blockbuster film that had just come out last month, starring Dennis Quaid as a knight and Sean Connery as the voice of a dragon named Draco. Kisara had already flown herself to Los Angeles three times in her jet to see it in theaters. With that mundane little thought, Kisara closed her eyes, blocking out the poster, her mouth contorted into a smile. _One more time– this is going to hurt._

A tightening of the jaw. An intake of breath. Kisara wrenched herself from the bed.

**…**

“Seto, you’ve got to leave now if you’re gonna make the boat for the big Tournament at Duelist Kingdom.” Mokuba, Seto Kaiba’s younger brother, wrapped his knuckles on the door to Seto’s office. No answer. Mokuba was little for his age, which was all of eleven years old. Unlike his brother, who had cut an imposingly tall figure as young as fourteen, Mokuba seemed in no rush to grow up. That luxury was part of the life Seto had wanted for his little brother, and for which he had fought so hard. Mokuba had long black hair, which Seto allowed, with the understanding that Mokuba brushed it every night before bed. He had eyes that were too green _not_ to remind both boys of their mother. “Seto, open the door!” He reached for the handle, knowing his big brother’s propensity for isolation and locked rooms. The door handle gave way to his touch, and the door creaked open. Somehow, this unnerved Mokuba even more than if his way had been barred. “…Ah…”

Seto was sitting at his desk, with no sign in the least of being packed or ready for Duelist Kingdom. He looked disheveled, his usually carefully brushed hair was matted, his clothing hung askew on his gangly frame. He was… just sitting there, his briefcase of cards open. The only sound was the rustling of him fretfully shuffling and reshuffling his deck. He looked unnerved. It was disconcerting. The unease already building in Mokuba’s chest swelled. “…Seto?”

“I’m not going, Mokuba.”

Mokuba did not – could not – even let that phrase sink in. “Not going? Why _not?!”_

 _“There’s no point!”_ And Seto tossed, _tossed,_ his deck onto the table. The cards scattered. Everywhere.

“…What do you mean, ‘no point?’” Mokuba asked quietly. This wasn’t Seto.

Seto closed his eyes. He was… shaking. “Kid, I am in no condition to duel anyone.” His hands were trembling. Those same hands that had held cards in them for as long as Mokuba could remember. Those same hands which had dragged them both from obscurity, and had taken down their step-father. Those hands were shaking. Something was wrong. It was as if… as if he’d done something. Something terrible. But this was Seto! No matter the costs, he never regretted anything. And yet… He looked as if… Something was very wrong.

“What are you talking about?!” He had to snap him out of it. Mokuba had to snap Seto out of it. Whatever ‘it’ was. “You always say: cards are power! And you’ve got all the strongest cards!” _Remember? Remember how unrelenting you are?_ This… this was just weird. Frightening.

Mokuba could tell that he wasn’t the only one that was frightened.

“…Since I lost my duel with Yugi, I just don’t know what I think anymore. Everything’s different. It feels as if I lost a piece of _myself_ that day!” He almost chocked on the words. His eyes went wide. It almost looked as if he was about to have a fit. The closest Mokuba had ever seen Seto come to this was when there had been a risk that they would be separated in the orphanage. Adopted by different couples. When Seto had realized there was the very real chance he would lose his little brother. But Mokuba was _here_ now.

Seto hadn’t lost anyone this time. A piece of himself? What was Seto talking about? He… He was here, in one piece. No one had lost a piece of themselves. No one had been torn in two. Everyone was still whole.

“…But Seto, you’re the best! You’re the champ!”

Shakily, Seto rose from his seat and pulled a card from inside his trench coat. He seemed delirious. Sick, even. “…Not since the day I was defeated by Yugi,” he muttered, as much to himself as to his brother, his eyes fixed on the card. “Here, Mokuba,” a flick of the wrist. Mokuba caught the card deftly. “I’m going away for a while,” Seto went on, his eyes shifting to different corners of the room, looking everywhere except at Mokuba. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. Keep this. It was always your favorite.” 

Mokuba hardly even looked at it. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that something was very, very wrong with Seto. “Why? Why are you leaving?” They had never been apart. Never. Not even the orphanage had been able to separate them. _What part of you did you lose?_ He was scared. They were both scared.

Seto wasn’t even seeing him. It was as though he was far away, replaying some memory he couldn’t actually remember. _“Because I don’t know who I am anymore.”_

And that was that. He just walked out the door with a final, “Take care, kid.” No way of reaching him. No explanation. With that briefcase in one hand, and the clothes on his back, the CEO of _KaibaCorp._ walked out of Mokuba Kaiba’s life.

“Seto, don’t go!” Mokuba reached out his hand, just as the door shut. “…oh…”

The luxury of not growing up was over.

**…**

She stood in the library. Kisara had managed to pull on a baggy burlap sack of a dress, which hung loosely on her, avoiding any points of injury. Avoiding the brace. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d worn it. Something she’d picked up in an _Anthropology_ outlet the last time she’d been on the mainland. Over it, to keep out the chill that kept seeping up her spine no matter what she did, Kisara had pulled a large, knitted dark blue cardigan. In the doorway, she now shuffled in her simple flats, the fear of falling again instilling an absolute need for steady footing. Steady footing… wouldn’t that be nice, in any sense of the term.

The library was dark, musty, and oak paneled. There _were_ paintings on the walls, but it was too dim to see them properly. Too murky for a library. Kisara had never understood it. Sometimes she wondered if her father had not wanted surplus lights _because_ he did not want the paintings exhibited. There was such a wealth of knowledge here. Old volumes gathered through the generations, brought here by the Pegasus patriarchs over the years – she could always feel the pedigree of her father's family when she stepped into this room. There were heirlooms covered in dust and shadows peering out from between the shelves – an old armchair, a wicker basket full of canes. Perhaps that was the reason that, despite her enjoyment of reading, she rarely did come here. The bloodline, firm, strong, confidant… it wasn't hers. She stood out like a white blotch against the dark mahogany, oak, and leather. Indeed, considering her father's humor, it was the most austere room in the castle. Even he could not go so far as to completely dance over this shrine of his forefathers. Though he had, not so much changed, but added some things. His own touch, as it were. Alongside the massive stuffed buffalo and tiger heads that hung along what little wall was not covered by bookshelves, and standing side by side with the great stuffed grizzly bears in the corners – were duel monster statues.

Looking up at the great-antlered buck over the fireplace – which she doubted was lit even in winter, let alone this fast-encroaching summer warmth – Kisara couldn’t help but think that he seemed rather glad of the company of the curled-up stone Guardian of the Fortress that was nestled atop the massive fireplace itself, looking up at his head-of-a-friend.

And one other thing had changed since Maximillion Pegasus had taken up ownership of his family estate on this quaint little island just off the west shore of the United States of America – The Egyptian Collection.

_“Kisara…”_

Kisara wiped around. A shiver ran down her spine as pain shot up it. She gripped at her hips. “Ah!” The gasp seemed to fill the entire room. The moment was broken. She panted, took a deep breath, and straightened up as best she could. Her waist was strapped tight with the brace. She could move. But how long it would be until she could _move…_ she couldn’t say.

Kisara looked about herself, into the darkness in the room, everything there telling her – _you shouldn’t be here. You’re not a Pegasus. Not really._ She was scared. She was genuinely scared. She had been scared getting up, scared of the pain. Scared of leaving her room, almost as if she had expected someone to stop her. To question her. To hurt her, as they had in the orphanage. To lock her up. She could take it then. She had expected it then. She… she didn’t know if she could take it now. Over the last many years she had become soft. Had become used to the luxury of not having to grow up too quickly. She was scared of this room. But most of all… most of all… she was scared of…

Kisara blinked. Somehow, in a daze, she had managed to place herself in front of the towering south wall that housed the bulk of her father’s literary collection on Egypt, accumulated during his travels and research. She felt nauseous. She could feel herself shaking. She couldn’t focus on anything. It was as though she was wading through a fog of thought and memory, and every time she tried to concentrate on any one image in her head, it would disintegrate, like sand between her fingers, or like the ruins of a structure. It was as though she had lost a piece of herself. _As though she didn’t know who she was anymore._

And then the idiocy of what she was doing hit Kisara like a ton of bricks. What? What on earth was she thinking? There… there was nothing to it. And, and if she went now to her father and explained to him how hurt she had gotten, he would ship her off to the best hospital in Los Angeles without a second thought. Yes. She was making something out of absolutely nothing. There… there was nothing to it…

Kisara swallowed. _She tasted blood and sand._ With that, she took a book off the shelf. By Dr. Arthur Hawkins, she read off the cover. Kisara walked over to one of the great windows that spanned up twenty feet, shoved open one of the moth-eaten curtain, and let the light strewn into the long abandoned, dark chamber.

**…**

It was a small house on the Pacific Ocean. It would do. No one would ever look for him here. From the outside, it looked like a very lovely, two story upper-middle class dwelling overlooking the sheer cliff to the sea and the rocky shoals below. Inside, however, instead of the retired fishing couple and the five cats, there were wires covering every surface.

And all of it, for the first week of its occupation, remained untouched.

The inhabitant, so recently arrived, spent his days by the window, staring out at the waves. Comatose. That was the only way one could describe the state that the young man was in. Had he committed himself as opposed to hidden himself, there is absolutely no doubt that he would have been placed in a wheelchair by the third day of his isolation. He did not eat. He did not sleep. His eyes, deep blue as they were, seemed to turn grey and lose more and more of their color with each passing hour. His breath was ragged. It almost seemed as though he withered away as he sat.

Bloodless and memoryless.

Then…after one such day… sleep finally took him. Though, in all honestly, the difference between wakefulness and sleep for him was hardly noticeable. Except for the dreams. The dreams made the difference. In the dreams… _“Seto, don’t go!”_ Mokuba’s voice. _“I’ll protect you too, Seto.”_ Whose voice was that? _“Thank you, Seto! I promise, I will return the favor! Thank you!”_ He was so sure that he knew that voice.

_“Seto, help me!”_

The young man jolted awake in his seat. It was pitch dark, both outside and in the house. The only sounds were of the waves and the quiet humming of unused but alert machinery. He blinked a few times. How long had he been sitting here? He mopped a hand over his face, settling his fingers to pinch the rim of his nose. Too long. Too long he’d spent in this comatose state. His mind scrambled, forcibly clearing back the fog. He took a steadying breath, and hauled himself out of the armchair.

He knew what he had to do now.

The next morning Seto Kaiba sat at a desk in an office with a window that overlooked the ocean, the cliff, and the rocks below. He looked terrible. His usually immaculate attire of green and dark blue trench coat and dark green colored shirt looked more crumpled now than when Mokuba had last seen him. And his usually steady hands were still shaking just a little.

For hours, his sleep starved brain worked, guiding his emaciated fingers. For the first time, he allowed his thoughts to wander into the past.

 _It’s no use._ _I’ve gone over it a dozen times in my mind, but I still can’t figure it out. How was a kid, who came out of nowhere, able to defeat a champion like me?_ He chanced a glance away from his latest invention, to the endless number of wires that he had surrounded himself with over the last few days. _I’ve run computer simulations, probability scenarios, and quantum analyses of our duel, but I still don’t have the answer._ He narrowed his eyes, trying to concentrate. _I had clearly been dominating the match. My Blue-Eyes White Dragon ripped through his forces–_

Kaiba blinked. Damn. The miniature screwdriver had slipped in his hand. Gently, lovingly, he removed the tarnished wire, and replaced it, his long fingers flying across the machinery that he knew so well. _I was on the verge of winning. …But Yugi wouldn’t give up. Against all odds, and with absolute faith in his grandfather’s deck, he somehow drew the one card that assured his victory._

Kaiba took a breath, reliving the moment. All three dragons… He shuddered. _I had always believed that Duel Monsters was a game of sheer power, but Yugi claims that the cards have a heart._ Immediately, his mind was drawn to his own beloved Blue-Eyes. Blue…eyes… a smile, through the bars. He swallowed. Paused in his work. Continued.

 _It sounds crazy, I know. But could Yugi be right? Is there really a heart of the cards that can affect the outcome of a duel? Is that how he won?_ …that smile… _The only way I’ll know for sure is to face Yugi again. And these new portable holo-generators will enable me to challenge him no matter where I find him._ He screwed the metal plate over the wire-belly. Done. He inspected the two circular contraptions that he had been laboring over. Done. …and not a moment too soon. He could hear movement outside the door.

So much for no one finding him here.

_If I could just get to…_

There was a loud knock on the door. No, not the front door. The door to his office. Well, whoever it was, they were confident that he would never sue them for trespassing. That was encouraging. “Seto Kaiba!” A fist fell on the door outside, the frame trembling with the impact. “We know you’re in there! Open the door or we’ll break it down!” The door buckled on its hinges. Calmly, Kaiba packed first one and then the other holo-generator into his suitcase, which he had lined appropriately. He would have to carry his deck in his coat pocket. Which reminded him–

With an almighty crack the door burst open.

**…**

With an almighty crack the heavy tome hit the floor, raising dust and memories as one.

Kisara sat in the dark leather chair, her hands still holding the phantom of the book now on the ground. Her fingers twitching at phantom remembrances. Her mouth was dry. She closed her eyes.

She could _read_ the hieroglyphs.

No, not the neat little English words filed into paragraphs, which were accompanied by pictures of hieroglyphs. Nor the Japanese of her orphanage days. Not the little cheat sheet provided in the appendix, created by Jean-François Champollion over two hundred years before as a simplified demonstration to receive more funding from the French monarchy– classifying the little wiggling line as ‘water,’ or the little circle as ‘sun.’ Kisara could read the hieroglyphs themselves. Not symbolically, but alphabetically.

_What is going on._

Kisara’s father had many books on Egypt. And why not? His fortune had been made in a game that started in Ancient Egypt – Duel Monsters. It’s date of origin was clouded, even by Ancient Egyptian standards. Historians could not even be certain if the game had come into prominence during the Old or Middle Kingdom eras. A vague reference would be made to it on a tomb wall, before it would vanish from the records for centuries, only to crop up again on a papyrus scroll. It seemed that the game was as old as Egypt itself.

Despite, or rather, perhaps because her father had been the game’s creator, Kisara herself had never mastered or even taken great interest in Duel Monsters. She did not have a knack for the rules. And while she could follow who was winning or losing by their amount of lifepoints, or whether someone had played a particularly clever move because of the cheers and cries of admiration it evoked from those around her in the audience, she was no pretend-champion herself. No. As with her appearance, Kisara had come to terms very early on that she was a very little scrawny girl who, by some strange chance of fate, had been thrust into a far more glamorous world that she was fit for.

Duel Monsters had no definite beginning. The power of this… ‘shadow realm’ seemed the best translation… spanned as far back as memory. It was quarried from the ‘darkness,’ just as the stone that made the great pyramids was quarried from the mountains east of the Nile. This game was molding into building blocks, however, at a _very_ distinct time in Egyptian history. Distinct, because of how little evidence there remained of it – the time of a nameless Pharaoh who lived after the time of Ramesses the Great, during the 19th Dynasty, in the New Kingdom era of Egypt.

And now she came to details.

Kisara gingerly picked the book up off the floor. The pages rustled in the stillness of the room. The dust, disturbed for the first time in an age, wafted in and out of the light. Like memories. Kisara let out a shuddering breath, disturbing the air even further. She… she couldn’t really have more than one past… could she? Her fingers tightened on the spine of the book, and the leather groaned with all the secrets that it held. 

**…**

Her grip tightened around his waist as the horse moved beneath them. She pressed her face into his back and breathed in deeply. How could this be? How could he be here? She had seen him vanish in a sea of storms, only to see him rise again in an ocean of sand. _I don’t understand._ And, after everything she had been through, she did not think she wanted to understand. Wasn’t it enough that he was here? For her? That they were both here, and safe.

"Memphis, the old Capitol, is dead ahead! Just follow that constellation, The Soul of Osiris!" His muscles shifted beneath her touch as he pointed. She didn’t even look. _No. Don’t leave me._ “Then make your way back to your own country!" A shudder wracked her body, and it had little to do with either the cold, or the movement of the horse. Suddenly, she was wide awake.

Of course. What was she thinking. Did she want the same fate to befall this boy as had befallen _him?_ Did she want to bring a curse on him, as she had the others? No. For his sake… hesitantly, stiffly, her limbs still sore from their stagnancy in the cage, she braced to let him go. However, first, she simply could not help herself. She leaned in close to his ear one last time, “What is your name?" He fell away from her, and she did not hear him hit the sand. An eon passed. Had he not heard? Surly… surly she couldn’t leave without hearing his name. …Not that it really mattered. She knew by what name to call that face. His name was Cr–

“Seto!” reached her ear against the hammering of hooves. “SETO!” broke the night.

Kisara smiled, whipping her face around. _So… your name is Seto._ She twisted in the saddle and, unseeing, waved into the blackness. “Thank you, Seto! I promise, I will return the favor! Thank you!” Kisara did not know _how_ she would repay the favor. But she felt that, somehow, that promise bound them.

**…**

Kisara’s fingers quivering at her sides, she stood in front of the bookshelf– every book once more in place. Gently, gingerly, Kisara snaked her arms around herself, and laid her hands on her shoulder, and her hip, remembering with what ease she had twisted in that saddle. _And I did… I did return the favor. I’m not yet sure how, but I did._ Which could only mean…

Kisara closed her eyes as another shot of pain wracked through her. _You… It was you that did this to me._

**…**

“Let’s go, Kaiba.”

Calmly, Seto Kaiba bolted his suitcase shut, and turned in his office chair. His feet scraped the floor. He took in the sight of his unwanted guests. Thugs. Two of them. Both wearing horribly fitted suits. Not that he was really in a position to judge. Hell only knew the last time he’d had his shirt ironed. And the thugs both had guns, which they were pointing directly at his un-ironed shirt. That seemed worth noting.

“On your feet.”

Of course, they _both_ needed to get a word in. It wouldn’t do for just _one_ of them to tell him what to do.

“Mr. Pegasus,” sneered the smaller, greasier one over his gun, “would like to have a few words with you.” Alternatively, ‘Come with us quietly so that we can shoot you deep in the forest surrounding this isolated house which you, in your infinite consideration, picked out yourself. We wish to bury you there, and would like you to save us the trouble of having to drag your dead weight from the second story of this residence.’

Kaiba smirked and, with a sigh, he swiveled back to face his desk and stood. The office chair creaked beneath him. He supposed saying that Pegasus wanted to see him was the simpler explanation. “Huh. I bet he would. But it’ll take more than you two goons to grab me.” He checked that the clamps on his briefcase were secure, not even sparing a glance for the men or their guns. Seto Kaiba, age eighteen, had seen much worse in a corporate office than either of these middle-aged washouts could ever offer up to him.

The greasy one growled. “This can go easy, or we can snap you in two, wise guy–”

 _“You’ll never take me alive!”_ Kaiba turned and slammed his foot into the office chair with enough force to send it careening into the two men. A gun fired. Kaiba deftly blocked his head with the bulletproof suitcase. He heard the bullet ricochet off and felt the shockwave run up his arm. With the two men blocking the door, there was only one way out of this room. Without hesitation, Kaiba took it. He threw himself out his office window, down the sheer cliff.

…Why? What a stupid thing to say. ‘You’ll never take me alive.’ As if that had ever been their intention. Why? Why had he lost his cool like that? He had plummeted half way down the cliff, the wind snapping at his hair and coat, before Kaiba even realized that he’d left his deck in the office. Damn. He snapped a hand out and clutched at an outcropping. The stop wrenched his whole body, but he held.

It was the mention of being snapped in two.

That was what got him. Who… why did the man have to say that? As if anyone would _actually_ snap someone else in two. Here. Now. Again… _Those blue eyes. That smile_.

The pain registered in his arm. The spray from the sea below swept over him. Kaiba’s mind caught up to his body. He looked up. He couldn’t see his office window from here. _Good._ He looked down. The rocks that appeared and disappeared out of the waves in the shallows were unforgiving, and everywhere. _They’ll think I died in the fall without a doubt._ He hung there a while longer, wanting to be certain that the men had left. Blood trickled down his hand where the crag had bitten into it. He felt a speckling of it on his face when he looked up. It smeared red against the white stone of the cliffside.

 _This is going to hurt._ He gritted his teeth, and swung his briefcase onto the flat of the ledge. He hauled himself onto that same ledge, staggered, and stood. Kaiba still had a long climb ahead of him. He was rather certain that his deck would not still be waiting for him at the end of it and, judging from what the gorillas had said, Maximillion Pegasus was at the bottom of this attempt on his life. 

His lip curled. Ever since he and Pegasus had entered a partnership a year ago in New York, Kaiba had known that Pegasus was threat. This however, was unprecedented. To murder the CEO of a partner company… Something was driving him. What had they promised? Money? Surely the CEO of _Industrial Illusions_ had enough of that. And how was he planning this takeover? As per the corporate bylaws, only a Kaiba could legally be at the head of–

Mokuba.

The crashing of the waves went mute in Kaiba’s ear. The only sound was the _drip, drip, drip_ of the blood running down his clenched fist, and falling onto the handle of his bullet-proof suitcase.

**…**

“Well, well, well. You’re awake!” Pegasus exclaimed with seeming genuine amusement as he tucked into his tiramisu dessert. “And you’re walking too!”

“Yes,” Kisara answered quietly. Her father had always said that the calm of her voice had its own imposing quality to it. Like a single, drawn out note on a flute or a pipe. She used that calm now. “I have been awake for some days now.” She was confident that, though she was leaning against the doorframe at one end of the Dining Hall, her father could hear her quite adequately from the other end, seated at the head of their long table. Croquet shifted behind him, seemingly uncomfortable at Kisara’s unblinking gaze – another thing that her father had always said was intimidating.

How much did he know?

“And spending time the library,” Pegasus said, washing down the phrase with a glass of wine. She said nothing. He swallowed. “So, what have you learned?”

He was wondering the same thing as she. How ironic.

Kisara blinked across the room at him, her face betraying nothing. “Learned? Nothing.” _Remembered? …a little._

“I am curious as to what prompted this sudden studiousness on your part.”

“I am my father’s daughter. Questions are answered by research.”

Pegasus’s fork paused on the way to his mouth. The tiramisu quivered in place. He looked up at her and, for a moment, he seemed to stop laughing. Not that she minded. The laughter in his eyes was no longer as it had been. It had become a cold, chilled laughter. “What do you know?”

Again, no answer. Pegasus set his fork down, and touched his left hand below his bangs, to where Kisara could not see, but the contents to which she knew too well. The Millennium Eye. One of what? Seven? Millennium Items. That much at least he himself had told her during bed-time stories. As for the rest… It could not be said she was not a fast learner. Learner? No. Perhaps a better term would be… Rememberer.

“Kisara, _what do you know?”_ A moment passed. He pressed his hand to his Eye. Nothing. And the same realization came to them at the same time. Pegasus’s face darkened. Kisara inhaled sharply. “…I see.” Once again, he picked up his fork.

Never had the silence been so thick between them as it was now. Then, it was broken. A door opened. Kisara heard footsteps. Who was disturbing them? The attendants knew to stay out until Pegasus was done eating, and Croquet was standing sullenly in the shadows.

Before Kisara could turn, a man came alongside her in the doorway. She looked up at him but he, dark glasses still on even though he was not only indoors but night had fallen some time ago, had eyes only for her father, to whom he looked across the Dining Hall. She realized who he was almost immediately. Who could forget that ridiculous head of brown hair, gelled to a point. It was– oh, what was his name? Kemo. One of Seto Kaiba’s bodyguards.

 _Seto Kaiba…_ A name that now churned Kisara’s stomach.

She opened her mouth to ask what he was doing here, in the Pegasus Castle, on Duelist Kingdom island, when somehow she found herself incapable of closing her mouth at all – let alone speaking. Her eyes focused on what the big man was caring.

Draped over his shoulder was a small boy. A great mop of raven black hair hid his face, but there was only one little boy it could be. There was only one little boy with hair like that whom her father could possibly be interested in. Mokuba Kaiba. …Seto Kaiba’s younger brother. Kaiba’s younger brother was draped over this man’s shoulder, unconscious, in her home.

Slowly…. Kisara turned her head back to look at her father. She, who rarely showed emotions above slight surprise or gentle amusement, knew her face must now be shining forth nothing short of abject horror. Kidnapper? Her father was a kidnapper?

 _Was this… Is this all part of the reason that you did not send me to the hospital?_ Though she knew now who was responsible for her injuries, Kisara could not help but think, _Was it so convenient for you that I was rendered immobile? Would admitting me for proper medical care have garnered too much attention from the public?_

Her father smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Ah,” he addressed Kemo, “at last.” He beckoned the man and, as he himself got up, he turned his attention on her one last time. “You are good, Kisara. But I always knew that. You are so mild, and so quiet. It really is a mercy that you do not realize your own power. If you did, I’m very much afraid that the gods themselves would bow to you. However, you do _not_ realize. And you are the better for it. Go back, my little Kisara. Go back to that charmed little world you have enjoyed for the past few years – that world of parties and _flying._ A world in which you have the luxury of not growing up. After so much pain, surly you know better than to invite it back upon yourself?”

He was threatening her. As she stood there, a great Dining Hall away from him, and looked into the smile of the only father she had ever know, Kisara knew that he was threatening her. She? Powerful? Alone, in pain, and confronted by her father, Kisara had never felt weaker in her life.

Then again… she could not account for all of her life yet, could she.

“There is, of course, the irony, in that which we do not know. Isn’t there?” Her father wiped his mouth with a napkin before folding it meticulously. A shiver ran down Kisara’s spine, her stare fixed on the Eye which she could not see beneath his silver hair. Then his eye – his flesh eye – met hers. She did not look away. “The irony,” he broke off, looking to the inner wall of the Dining Hall, away from the windows, “of what we cannot know.” She followed his gaze to two paintings. Now that she thought about it, these were the only two paintings her father painted that she had ever gotten a good look at. They were both portraits, and they held well-lit places of honor in their lives – greeting her as she came to breakfast every day, day in and day out. “And it is quite ironic, that even the brightest minds – such as yours, my dear – are blind to what they know, when it may endanger their luxury.”

What could he mean? Kisara looked to the paintings again. One was of Cecelia, her father’s love. Beautiful, blond curls cascading over her shoulders. Angelic face. Kisara had wondered more than once if Cecelia had truly been as beautiful as her father painted her here. Well, she had been to him and, Kisara supposed, that was all that mattered in the end. Cecelia – the reason her father never remarried. The reason he never had children of his own.

The other portrait was of the man who had delivered Kisara to the orphanage in Japan when she was just a baby. She had always assumed that her father painted him from a description given by the orphanage supervisor, as a gesture to his newly adopted daughter. A way of making Kisara feel more connected to an otherwise entirely disconnected past. She had been touched the first time that she saw it when she had been… what? Eleven? It made her feel welcome on this strange island, surrounded by water, in this strange castle, so far from all that she knew.

Her father had painted the man as a gentleman of Egypt, the way Jean-Léon Gérôme painted men and scenes of the desert land in the 1800s. If she did not know better, the seeming realism of this portrait would have been so staggering that Kisara could have mistakenly thought it was this stranger, not her father’s dear Cecilia, that Maximillion Pegasus painted from life– rather than from hearsay of some orphanage employee. Her father had captured every fold of his turban. His clean-shaven jawline. The ruddiness of his face. And, of course, the great golden key that hung around his neck, so bright it seemed to shine off the canvas.

The realism of the painting _was_ too staggering.

Kisara blinked. Her eyes trailed up to the man’s face, where every line and every crease was accentuated, as they could only be accentuated on a real face. Except for the eyes. Kisara’s lips parted infinitesimally. For, despite the realism of the painting, the man’s eyes had no pupils. They were just two round golden disks, like the hieroglyph for the sun, for Ra. Two abstract disks in an otherwise all too real face. It was almost as though… they held no living soul. Kisara’s gaze again flitted down to that golden Key around his neck. The Millennium Key. The realization crashed upon Kisara like a wave. She had not seen this painting at the age of eleven. She had seen it when she was ten, when she was confused and disoriented and new to Duelist Kingdom. Her father had not painted it after he adopted her, but before. Her father _knew_ the man from the painting.

“…No.”

“Oh yes, my dear.” Pegasus sneered as he looked from portrait to daughter. “And I assure you, by my vanity as a painter, it is an accurate depiction. He is the same. The same man who, your caretaker told me, left you on the doorsteps of that orphanage and revealed to you your name– I knew the same man, from some time before. Thus, my hunch as to who you were when I heard of you was proven accurate upon meeting you. You are,” he smiled. Kisara’s heart leapt into her mouth. Who was she? _“Kisara.”_

Eyes glazed, she stared at the painting, no longer the work of an artist’s imagination, but a face to a name she did not even know.

 _“You’re out of your depth, child.”_ The words fell like a rock into the pit of her stomach. “Forget. And think. Why would you want to remember? To help him?” Her father tossed his head in the direction of Kemo, who had taken a stand by Croquet, with Mokuba Kaiba still draped over his shoulder. “For him, when his brother did _this_ to you? Oh yes, I know all about it. You know how it happened, my dear? Hm? _He tore it in half._ Yes. Your gift. Do you even know what your gift to him was? No? Well then, let us be blunter – _your soul._ Yes. _He tore your soul without a care.”_

Her father chuckled. Actually chuckled. It rumbled through the room. The chair scraped as he finally got out from behind the table and moved to leave. “Oh, and whatever promises he made you the day he met you at your orphanage, you would be well served to forget them as well. It’s not like they are worth anything now,” he called back in farewell. “Go back, darling girl, to the luxury of not growing up. And _forget.”_

The door slammed shut. Kisara stood alone in the Dining Hall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustration of the Seto & Kisara, each in their own turmoil: [SetoKisa Week 1. Day 4. “Rules are Made to be Broken.”](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/623563355306721280/waifine-september-23rd-day-4-rules-are-made)


	6. Just a Little Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One year before the events of Duelist Kingdom, at the Intercontinental Duel Monsters Tournament, Seto Kaiba and Kisara Pegasus come face to face with one another for the first time since her adoption.

Book I | **Just a Little Girl**

Duelist Kingdom Arc

Prologue

_Seto Kaiba: 17 years old_

_Kisara Pegasus: 15 years old_

**…**

A year later Seto Kaiba would wonder if Maximillion Pegasus had not invited him personally to the Intercontinental Duel Monsters Tournament of 1995 as a demonstration of the older man’s power. If, seeing that Kaiba had just relatively recently taken over his father’s company, and the ever going battle he now faced in transforming that company from one of war machines to one for children’s enjoyment, Pegasus had even then picked him out as a victim. Or if, as a new and rising competitor in the entertainment industry, Pegasus had not decided to put the young man in his place – a demonstration of power. Actually… no. Seto did not wonder. He knew that this was the case.

Well, what Seto Kaiba saw that day in the arena between the creator of Duel Monsters and Bandit Keith did not frighten him. It cautioned him.

It wasn’t a duel. It was an embarrassment. A nationwide embarrassment. Somehow – and Seto still could not quite understand how, even a year later – Pegasus had been able to predict every single movement of his opponent. And “Bandit” Keith Howard, a man whose well-toned and scruffy appearance made him look formidable, went to pieces in front of the entire arena of people. He had been champion of Seto-didn’t-know-how-many tournaments in America. He had been called “a representation of America’s strength in the Game of Life,” according to _New York_ magazine. And, by the time Pegasus was done with him, he was on his hands and knees, his deck having spilled through his fingers, crushed.

Seto had watched as Pegasus wrote some notes down on a piece of paper that he must have prepared for the purpose beforehand, and called a boy over from the crowd. Voices broke out in mutters across the stadium. What was happening? Bandit Keith objection rose above all the rest. “What do you think you’re doing?! Asking for help’s illegal!”

Pegasus rose with grace from his seat, undaunted. “I don’t need help,” he answered nonchalantly, brushing his red suit down of wrinkles. “A child could defeat you, er, _Bandit_ Keith. And I’m going to prove it.” It was smug. It was daring. It was insulting beyond words.

Pegasus then left center stage, actually left it, and went to sit in the empty seat next to Seto. It was all Seto could do to stare. Pegasus smiled at him, notably looking up and down at the school uniform that he had chosen to wear to the event. Seto’s eyes narrowed, daring Pegasus to comment on his youth. Wearing this uniform was a statement of his own: _just try and underestimate me._ Instead, Pegasus turned back to the spectacle before them. “I hope you are enjoying the tournament so far, even though it must seem so crude to you, unlike the holographic dueling stations _KaibaCorp._ is developing.”

Before Seto could answer, the boy had done it. Keith lay down one card, the boy glanced at the paper, lay down his own card – and the match was over. Seto watched in undisguisable shock as the crowd was raised to its feet by the sheer sensationalism of the event, as Pegasus returned to the arena and raised ‘Sam’s’ hand, and declared him the winner, and as Keith slid from his chair to the ground, his deck skidding across the floor.

It was a show of strength. And it was made just for him, Kaiba. What Pegasus could do to Keith, he could do to anyone. That was the message Seto Kaiba was meant to walk away with. And he took note.

**…**

Standing at the gala only a short while later, Seto’s ears were still ringing with the din of, _“Sam is the winner!”_ And he knew that what was on his mind was one everyone else’s. How? How had Pegasus done it? Seto looked up from his glass of water. He was yet too young to drink, officially. And to have taken any sort of fizzy drink would have seemed much too childish. Wearing a uniform was a statement. Drinking Coca-Cola was not. Water was unassuming enough. His eyes darted across the crowd before him. They were the usual. Competitors and honored guests had been invited here today. Many of the men wore rented suits. The women’s fake diamonds caught the light of the chandelier. The heated roar of the stadium had been replaced with the room-temperature murmur of rumors and clinking glasses. Bandit Keith was nowhere to be found. Gossip had it that he was drinking away his sorrows in a hole-in-the-wall somewhere, completely broken.

Seto wondered… How many of the painted peacocks in this room were already under Pegasus’s power, whether through fear or money? Chances were, he and Keith were a few of the diehards. Keith because he was too stupid to know better. Seto, because he was too clever to know better…

He took a sip of water. Clapping swept over the crowd. Seto looked to the main entrance, and there was the victor of the Tournament, soaking it up for all it was worth, waving with one arm while on the other he had–

Ah. Yes. Of course. That had been one of the more…minor… things that had, for a moment, made Seto Kaiba hesitate in taking _KaibaCorp._ from the making of weaponry to that of trading cards. It was a small world, at the top. And he intended to go to the top. But at the top… it was a world she was part of. It was a world _he_ had made her part of. He took another sip of water, his eyes fixed.

The party progressed. The humming returned. Pegasus was, of course, swarmed by well-wishers and congratulators, all lining up patiently to kiss his ass. She stayed by his side, at least at first. Then, Seto watched as, with a discreet kiss to her surrogate father’s cheek, she gently slipped her arm out of his, and made her way to the drinks table. He, Seto, had no need to talk to any of these people here. Most of them were duelists that had been defeated in the later rounds of the tournament – useless. Or were distinguished guests – even more useless. They had only been brought here to be intimidated. No, Seto was here to see Pegasus, and Pegasus alone. And he would be damned if he would be swept up in the rest of this crowd.

The man at the bar gave her a glass of sparkling water, and a dish with half a lemon on it, cut down the center. She took the lemon, and squeezed the juice into the glass, then put it back onto the dish. The barman took it, and she seemed to thank him. All this time she stood with her back to Seto, and came in and out of sight as people walked the great distance between them.

She had grown. Of course, he had caught glimpses over her over the years. Yet now, with the two of them in the same business… Not that they were, really. She was a child, adopted child, of a businessman. And though he had started out the same, he was a businessman himself now. No, there was nothing similar about them now….

She was dressed in a demure, deep blue dress. Her shoulders, through seemingly sleeveless, she had draped with a thick white shawl that was too large for her narrow frame. She wore flats, and her hair had been done up into a neat bun.

No high heels, no jewelry, no flourishes whatsoever. Seto was seventeen years old now. He’d had girls. No– women. And enough of them. And now, looking at her as she took that glass in hand to bring it up for a drink, he knew for certain, with all the contempt of the two years that separated then, that she was _just a little girl._

She turned, their eyes met, and his mouth went dry.

Those eyes. How could he have forgotten. Then again, how could he have remembered? One could not capture that sort of thing in a photograph. To her face, her figure, and her attire, still clung all the trappings of a fifteen year old girl. But in her eyes there was an… understanding. A vulnerability that seemed as though it had been a part of her longer than she could possibly have been alive. There was eagerness, and hunger, and strength and, glazed over all of it, a reserve that smothered all the rest and seemed to keep all in check. It was not inhuman. It was all too human. It was something he understood all too well.

For the second time he saw himself in her eyes, and hated it. She smiled a thin-lipped smile, raised her glass as if to toast him and, with a sip, broke the eye contact.

He tried to swallow. His mouth was still dry. Almost as if it was coated by sand. He blinked, and drained his glass. “KAIBA-BOY!” An arm clamped down on his shoulder, and Seto nearly spewed out the water he had not yet swallowed. “I am _so_ happy you could make it!” Seto looked up, into the face of Maximillion Pegasus, the man of the hour. He looked positively gleeful with victory, a large glass of red wine in the hand that wasn’t clamped on Seto’s shoulder.

Seto fixed his gaze on the one eye he could see behind that mane of silver hair. “Yes. You said it would be worth my while,” he said flatly.

Pegasus burst into giggles. “Of course, of course! Heaven forbid the great Seto Kaiba travels to America, simply to celebrate a victory with his fellow in arms!” Fellows in arms? _Interesting choice of words._

“You didn’t know when you extended the invitation that it would _be_ a victory.”

“Oh,” Pegasus said, much more quietly and smoothly and, for a moment, Seto felt quite certain that he had the attention of both the man’s eyes, “didn’t I?” Silence. Then, with a final clap on his shoulder, Pegasus proclaimed loudly, “Business! I want to talk business with you! Can you imagine how much more fun it would have been out there on that stage, if they had been actual holograms, instead of a silly table?! Of course you can! You invented it, didn’t you? Clever boy! However, business can wait till tomorrow. For now, enjoy yourself. Oh, and if you want a glass of wine, please go ahead. No one’s standing on ceremony here, and what I say goes.”

Seto’s mind was reeling at lightning speed. Of course he had been hoping for some sort of proposition from the creator of Duel Monsters, but this seemed as though it would be on a much larger scale. Almost a merger? Well, if that, Seto would have to call up his lawyers as soon as he got out of this dive. When would Pegasus want to meet? Tomorrow? The blood was pulsing in Seto’s ears until–

“You’ve met my daughter, Kisara, haven’t you?”

Pop.

“Kisara! _Youuuwhoo!_ Angel-face!” With no show of bashfulness whatsoever, Pegasus flailed his arm across the sea of heads. It was easy enough to spot her. Who could mistake that shock of white hair, as she turned to look at them both? It was then that Seto knew he had to fortify himself against her. As she made her way through the crowd towards her father, with her every step, Seto’s back straightened, and his jawline set.

And then they were standing in front of each other, for the first time in five years. The time seemed eons. How long had he looked to this reunion? _Centuries. What? No…_

Neither spoke. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. His eyes darted to her lips. Her eyes darted to the blue collar of his uniform… and that was the final straw. Seto looked to Pegasus and said curtly, “Please, be in touch. I’m interested in this ‘business’ that you want to talk.” He gave her a nod, hardly looking at her, turned, and left.

Seto firmly set his glass down on an _hors d'oeuvre_ table as he walked out the door, numbly accepted his jacket in exchange for the ticket at the coat exchange, and stood in the cool night air as he waited for his limousine outside the stadium, where both the tournament and the gala had been held.

As he slid into the backseat, for a moment, he wondered what it was Kisara would have said to him. What it was she could have said, after five years. … _Thousands..._ He blinked. Perhaps nothing. Probably nothing. She was as mute as he. He knew. They were the same. No, not the same. Never the same. He had made something of himself. He was strong.

…He had run away.

**…**

The deal was done in a week. Seto wanted this deal. He was young. He was up and coming. He was hungry. His one flaw in business, as he later learned, was that his hunger could cloud his caution. An alliance with the creator of Duel Monsters would give him stability in this new field. He needed such an alliance if the company was to successfully transfer from machinery to playing cards. Seto shook hands with Maximillion Pegasus over a model of the hologram-built-in arena, and the deal was done. _Industrial Illusions_ got the holograms. _KaibaCorp._ was given free reign with all things Duel Monster related. Nowhere during that week did he see any sign of that girl. Not that he looked.

His suitcase was packed, all his papers were filed away, and he flew back to Japan without a second glance. He knew this wouldn’t last. He knew that there was no room at the top for two companies. And he knew that Pegasus would not have let him have as much power as he did if Pegasus thought he could not control him. He also knew his own capabilities.

What he did not know was where he would be this time in a year. He knew his own capabilities. What he did not know– what neither he nor Pegasus knew– were hers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustration of the the confrontation between Kisara and Seto: [HERE](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/624382262614671360/neither-spoke-she-opened-her-mouth-but-no-words)


	7. Real Posion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kisara seeks to help the captured Mokuba, refusing to allow her injury to hinder her. Meanwhile, Kaiba must keep Yugi Mutou from losing in the Duelist Kingdom Tournament - even when faced against Kaiba's own stolen deck. Kaiba must bring his deck, and his Blue-Eyes White Dragon, down.

Book I | **Real Poison**

Duelist Kingdom Arc

Part III

_Seto Kaiba: 18 years old_

_Kisara Pegasus: 16 years old_

**…**

Kisara squeezed out from behind the suit of armor and into the hallway after she was certain that the guard had passed. Her side throbbed, but she pressed her hand on her hip, and pressed her lips together. She walked in front of the door she was aiming for and, as gingerly as she could, crouched in front of it. The keyhole. She tried to breathe steadily. She could not believe that she was doing this.

… _Believe…_

Her eyes slid shut and, for a moment, all she could hear was the sound of her own pulse thumping in her ears. Then, she began. Deftly, Kisara pulled free the two hairpins and, as the two obstinate strands of hair fell free, her nimble fingers mechanically straightened the pins.

" _Remember,"_ whispered a voice in her ear that she did not know from this lifetime. _"You've got to work fast, or else the shop keeper will get back before you've finished. Then that pretty white pelt of yours will be all black and blue."_

_Kisara sighed, and gave a vexed look to the many examples of locks, knots, and hand-held booby traps strewn across the cave floor before her. They had made something of a home here, in the abandoned quarries deep in the mountains east of the Nile. She couldn't even imagine where he had gotten all of these knickknacks. The next moment she was distracted by his fingers running through her hair. She stiffened. She still couldn't get used to the feeling of human touch. Not the kind one._

_"Now, try again. You'll be the best thief in Lower Egypt by the time I'm done with you. Then, it’ll be on to the capitol with us – to Thebes – as we always talked about."_

_Her mouth twitched into a smile, and she looked to him. "This is your idea of showing a girl a good time, is it?"_

_A harsh, crooked smirk knifed across his face. It almost looked like a second scar, the first one still raw and ugly across his right eye, where it had been recently gashed. "Well, I could think of some other things…" he breathed, leaning in to her and–_

_Click. The lock sprung free. She smiled._

Click. The lock sprung free. She smiled.

Hardly daring to believe it, and trying her best to stem the rest of the memories associated with the scar-faced boy, so that she could focus on the matter at hand, Kisara used the door handle to pull herself upright again, pocketed the now useless hairpins, and opened the door.

There had been many changes since her accident. The Duelist Kingdom Tournament had begun. Everyone seemed to forget about her existence altogether. She remained unsupervised. Her father had threatened her, and then left her to her own devices. Did he really think she would do nothing? Now that she knew so much? Knowledge was power. He had always told her that. And now she knew why. After all, who could have more knowledge than one who possessed the Millennium Eye?

The occupant of the room looked up at her from his bed. Their eyes met, and caution and gentle mistrust shone from both. Mokuba Kaiba opened his mouth as if to speak, when Kisara put one thin finger to her lips to indicate silence. She quickly took the final steps into the room, shutting the door behind her. He stood. For a moment, they merely examined each other, as two animals would, both meeting each other on uncertain terrain. And Mokuba Kaiba was just as interesting to Kisara Pegasus as she was to him.

He was small, even for an eleven year old. Yet there seemed to be a sense of pride about him that would not have been there from birth, but had been cultivated with some years of wealth. His hair was a tattered mess. Whoever it was that kept him fed and watered clearly did not bother to keep him groomed. And his eyes were emerald green and all the starker because of the raven hair. Whichever parent his older sibling looked like, the younger boy looked like the other. There was nothing of Seto Kaiba in Mokuba. Though… who was Kisara to say?

"Who are you?" he asked, though quietly, interrupting her thoughts. Quietly… but venomously.

She swallowed, resting her weight on the door handle. She had twenty minutes before the next guard walked by. She needed to be done with this and well away from here by then. She couldn't risk discovery. "You know who I–"

"Of course," Mokuba Kaiba cut in, folding his arms. "What do you want, Ms. Pegasus?"

Were the situation not so dire, his attempt at intimidation would have been almost humorous. If the situation were not so dire. And if it did not partly work. Perhaps he was more like his brother than she realized. Her stomach turned. She needed to keep this simple.

"I'm here to help you escape," Kisara said. With her free hand she reached into her pocket and pulled out two slips of paper. "I've been watching the guards. These are the exact times of their rounds. I recommend getting out of here right after the 4:30 guard passes your door, and before the 5:00 one brings you dinner. Also, a map of the island. It's more treacherous than you'd imagine, and speed will be absolutely vital." She offered him the papers.

His eyes narrowed. "…Why?"

Why indeed… Her father's words echoed in her head. _"Forget. And think. Why would you want to remember? To help him? For him, when his brother did this to you?"_ But then, this wasn't about him, was it? No. It was about her.

When Kisara spoke, it came out as barely more than a whisper. "Your brother did me a favor once. Or, at least, he thought he did. And I, at the time, promised to return it. The chance never arose… until now."

Another moment of silence. Finally, Mokuba unfolded his arms, walked across the room, and took the papers from her hand.

"At 4:31, strip your bed, tie the sheets into a rope, fasten it to your bed, and use it to climb out the window. They'll know soon enough, so don't waste any time. After that, make your way to the dock. There shouldn't be too many guards there. After all, they'll be trying to prevent disqualified duelists from staying on the island. Not from anyone getting off it. Not at first. Move quickly. Understand?"

Mokuba looked from the pieces of paper to her. "Thank you, Ms. Pegasus."

She smiled softly, encouraged. "Call me Kisara, please."

"Kisara…" he said thoughtfully. She nodded, and turned to leave. "What happened to you?" She looked back to see his eyes on her hand, on the door handle, still taking most of her weight.

Her smile wavered. "A little accident."

"Ah." Again, she turned to leave. "Did you sleep with my brother?" Everything inside her froze. She stared into the door. What a thing to ask at eleven. "I'm sorry to sound rude," he continued, and she could actually hear the genuine apology and confusion in his voice, "but I can't imagine any other reason some girl would just do this for me."

Her mouth twitched. _Some girl. Naturally._ Kisara turned back to look at Mokuba, "Because that is the context in which he knows most girls?"

Mokuba blinked, and his resolve seemed to waver. Maybe it was the way she was looking at him. Her father did say her gaze intimidated. 

"You didn't answer my question," he said, looking to the floor.

"Nor you mine," she responded calmly.

A pause. He looked up. "Yes." He shrugged. "Generally."

Discomfort shot through Kisara’s side, and she gingerly rested her hand across her waist. She knew now there was no disguising the look of pain on her face. "No." She turned the door handle, and walked out of the room. "Not insofar as I can remember," she murmured under her breath. The door locked behind her.

**…**

Pegasus laughed openly, flipping through the pages of his _Funny Bunny_ comic, and at the same time methodically swirling his wine. "Where do these guys get all their ideas?" he cooed. He turned to another page, and took another sip, before breaking into fresh giggles.

…He had forgotten what it was like to watch people, not being sure of what they'd do. She really was such a fascinating girl. It had been a difficult decision, really. When Kisara had tumbled down all those stairs, he had been presented with a choice. He could have sent her to the mainland, and out of the way. …Or he could keep her here. To send her to LA or New York would have sent the paparazzi into a frenzy, and it wouldn't be the sort of attention that he wanted. He didn't need any personal information leaking out right now, not when everyone's eyes were so conveniently fixed on his Tournament.

However, keeping her here would mean risking the danger that she would… _interfere._ He knew Kisara. Knew her much better than she knew herself – which was hardly a wonder. After all, the girl was only sixteen years old. _Ah, and yet, so much more…_ Pegasus was forced to ask himself the question: did he think her interference could make a difference?

"Er…" Croquet cleared his throat behind him, "Master Pegasus? A thousand pardons, sir."

Pegasus took the wine from his lips, irritated to be interrupted in his trail of thought. He inhaled deeply, and closed his eye for a moment. "Gorgonzola cheese and the world's finest wine," he mused. "Along with a copy of my favorite comic book," he said, rattling off the spread on the table in front of him as he sat in the great Dining Hall. He opened his eye. "Times like these are more precious to me than any other. _You do realize that, don't you?"_

He rather sensed than saw Croquet tense behind him. Good.

"But… the prisoner has escaped."

Pegasus quirked an eyebrow, suddenly fascinated by the shade of red in his wine. "Which one?" he asked, almost disinterestedly. Or was it melodramatic to call Kisara a prisoner?

Croquet was silent for a moment. The implication of what Pegasus said was not lost on him. "The boy we imprisoned in the north tower," he clarified. "…I have our men searching the island, but… so far there's no sign of him."

"Oooh," Pegasus exclaimed, as though in mock shock. "I guess he didn't _appreciate_ my hospitality," he pouted. "Well no matter. I'm sure I know _exactly_ where our little escapee is heading." He languidly pulled out a remote control from his pocket, and directed it at the ceiling. "He'll seek out Yugi." He cleared his throat. "Computer," he commanded, "request data on the status of the Duel Monsters Tournament." A screen slowly slid out from the center of the ceiling.

The computer began rattling off information, and as Pegasus listened with one ear, he also allowed his mind to wander. So… the younger Kaiba-boy had escaped. It was hardly surprising, considering the tenacity of his older brother. Still… while the child might have always been resolved on leaving the famous Pegasus hospitality, he would not have been able to avoid Croquet's detection for this long without some help.

Maximillion Pegasus smirked. _Really,_ _Kisara… how silly…_

Yugi Mutou, the computer reported, was of course doing well.

"Wonderful," Pegasus said, leaving his musings once again. "I expected no less. He is determined to work his way up in the standings to gain entry into my castle." Suddenly, quite suddenly, Pegasus's face contorted. Gone was the playful nature, however sinister in undertone. For an instant, the man looked quite mad. "…Which is exactly what I want little Yugi to do."

Just as suddenly, his face cleared. "We'll just keep our spy cams trained on our star duelist. Sooner or later the little runaway prisoner will confront Yugi… for reasons of his own." _That's right, little Kisara. You can try to save them. You can try to save them all. But you can hardly save them from their own stupidity, can you? It's difficult, isn't it? Being surrounded by such absolute stupidity._

"Very wise, sir." Croquet chorused behind him. So stupid.

"Actually, the boy's escape plays right into my plans," Pegasus inserted, just as Croquet made to leave, insisting on informing his bodyguard of just how entirely he had thought things through. "…And I do have such special plans in store for Yugi today. Plans that I hope he'll find as entertaining as I do." And as for Kisara… Well, she really was her own worst enemy. Intelligent, but what good was that when coupled with the sort of impulsive nature that she had? And she looked so deceptively _cautious_ too. _That great heart will be the death of you, girl._ Pegasus burst into fresh laughter.

**…**

"Running Identification Verification Protocol. Please state your name," a computerized voice-recognition system activated as he entered the underground base directly beneath the Kaiba Mansion.

"Seto Kaiba."

He stood in the darkness, his eyes transfixed, his already pallid form now bathed in the ghoulish light of the giant blue blinking screen. It seemed to take all the color out of the room. Exhausted, he rammed himself into the office chair in front of the computer. He could not relax. He could not sink into the dusty leather. If he did…

He hadn’t slept in days.

The effort it had taken to break onto his own property was ridiculous– unfamiliar guards at the front gate, the ten-foot wall over which he'd had to scramble… and that was after climbing up that entire cliff face, with a bleeding hand and a suitcase no less. Still on from there… into the heart of his property… to the library beneath his mansion, and finally through the hidden door behind a bookcase he'd installed years ago. Then again, perhaps he ought to be relived. Had _he_ still been in charge of security of his own house, it would have been impossible to breach rather than just inconvenient

Now, here he was. Headphones and microphone in place. He watched as the red bar coursed across the computer screen…

_Verified._

"I thought I'd seen it all. But having to break into your own house?" Now that she was sure who he was, the cheekiness of the Artificial Intelligence of Kaiba’s computer returned to full force. Kaiba pinched the rim on his nose.

"…It's too long a story for right now."

"Too long a story!" Her voice grated on his already shredded nerves. "Well maybe _I'm_ not in such a talkative mood myself right now!"

"I'd find that hard to believe," he said wearily, letting his head loll back in the seat momentarily and closing his eyes, waiting for her to load her programs. He'd designed the AI’s character on Mokuba's behest, so that the boy could have someone he could always talk to when Seto was away on business. Kaiba almost regretted it now.

"Such a smart guy," she answered sarcastically. Color splashed through his closed eyelids, and he opened his eyes. She was projecting an image of _KaibaCorp._ "While you were off _gallivanting,_ a hostile takeover of _Kaiba Corporation_ has begun!"

 _Gallivanting… really._ Kaiba narrowed his eyes, and straightening in his seat, "I know," he said darkly. Different images flashed across the screen, first of different _KaibaCorp._ conglomerates, then of Maximillion Pegasus’s private island, Duelist Kingdom. The AI caught Kaiba up on everything he had missed and, worse, confirmed everything he had dreaded. The board of _KaibaCorp._ had made a pact with Pegasus. They were taking full advantage of Kaiba’s recent defeat by Yugi Mutou. If Pegasus could defeat Yugi, the board promised him control of _KaibaCorp._ And, to add insult to injury, Yugi was no long invincible, as he had lost Exodia. Kaiba's fingers clutched at the arms of his chair. Well, they had been having _quite_ the party since he'd been away. The AI saved the worst news for last.

"When it rains it _pours,” the AI sympathized._ “Pegasus _knows_ all about the _Corporation_ bylaws that require a living Kaiba heir to make any changes legal." Kaiba stared at the screen, jaw muscles clenching as the computer displayed photographs of Pegasus and of Mokuba next to each other. His chest hurt at the sight Mokuba's picture. And when he thought of their last parting… He'd already know all of this about the bylaws… but to hear the confirmation... The AI went on. "Mokuba's his prisoner. And with you out of the way, it's likely Pegasus will exert _all kinds_ of pressure to make your brother do what he wants. One way, _or another."_

Kaiba closed his eyes again. He needed to stay calm. He needed to subdue the murderous intent welling inside of him. For now. Later... later he would find Pegasus. And he would kill him. That was the only conclusion that this horrific episode in their lives could meet. He would drag him down to hell himself, _but he – would – kill – him._

"So now you know," the computer concluded. "What are we gonna do!"

Kaiba opened his eyes, and remained silent, staring at the screen, thinking. Finally, when he did speak, it was in a low and deadly tremor that melded together with the humming of the machines around him. "They'll keep my brother safe, at least until the takeover's complete. So I've got to make sure Pegasus doesn't defeat Yugi in a duel. No matter what." It was so strange… to hear those words coming out of his own mouth. But it was what had to be done.

He slammed his fist down on the keyboard in front of him. The wound he had sustained on the cliff made his hand throb.

"I'm not going to give up _Kaiba Corporation_ without a real fight." He'd worked too hard. Too long. "It's takeover time…" he whispered, "by _me._ We're going to hack right into Pegasus's computer main frame." He unclenched his fists, and set his spiderlike fingers on the keys. "Next stop, _Duelist Kingdom."_

**…**

Mokuba did not escaped. He did not head for the boats as Kisara had told him to do. Instead, he confronted Yugi, whom he believed was responsible for all the Kaibas' current misfortunes, and challenged him to a duel. He was recaptured by Kemo, and now Yugi was facing a challenger of Kemo's choice, for the chance to reclaim Mokuba's freedom.

… _When did everything go so wrong?_

Kisara watched the duel from the Surveillance Room, where fifty different screens blinked at her, showing her different views of the island. But she was interested in only one screen – the one showing her Mokuba Kaiba, Yugi Mutou, and his opponent to be. So, there she stood in the darkness, her eyes transfixed, her already colorless form now bathed in the ghoulish light of fifty blue blinking screens.

And Yugi's opponent was… _the ghost of Seto Kaiba?_

Kisara gripped at the brace that confined her, and leaned more heavily on a cane. She had finally given into the pain and taken one of canes kept in baskets in the library. It was an antique. There was quite a collection in there. This particular exemplar was made of _blue mahoe,_ with streaks of the azure mixing with ashen grey in the wood. The handle was of bone and, despite its age, had not yellowed, but remained almost as stark white as the fingers that gripped it. The handle was carved in the shape of a dragon’s head.

No one had given her a modern hospital-issued cane of her own. No one seemed too eager that she should be able to move around. Kisara was sure that her father knew that she had granted Mokuba his freedom, as short lived as it had been. She also knew that her father did not care. _The ghost of Seto Kaiba_. Kisara did not sit down. She could not move, her feet and her eyes fixated. _No… it can’t be the ghost of Seto Kaiba… Kaiba can’t be… dead. Can he?_ Her bone-thin fingers tightened on the cane so harshly that, had there been any color in Kisara's hand, it would have fled it now. The voice of the ghost cracked through the speakers. That voice. Was that his voice? It had been so long since Kisara had heard Seto speak. It didn’t sound like him. But then, was anything of Kaiba similar to what Kisara remembered of Seto? Who even had been ‘Seto?’ Had he been the boy at the orphanage gate? Had he been someone else? Someone whom Kisara remembered in half-dreams? The man opposing Yugi did bear a passing resemblance to the man she had seen on the cover of _The_ _Domino Times._ Kisara’s eyes followed the man as he stepped onto his podium in the arena. He was the source of light in the dark room. And he looked like a creature of such darkness. It could not be him. Surely there would never be a version of Seto that Kisara would not recognize. She did not know how she was certain, but she was. She had to be. And yet–

"It's a fact," Kemo's voice cracked into the silence of the otherwise empty Surveillance Room. Kisara had muted all other servers. "Two witnesses saw him fall to his doom."

She felt sick. Finally, and only because a violent wave of nausea went through her, Kisara closed her eyes, blocking out the image. First her father refused to give her proper medical attention, leaving her practically immobile, then he had kidnapped the child, Mokuba Kaiba, and now this – the supposed "fall" of Seto Kaiba. She was not an idiot. And she could not wash away fact. Her father… the father she had come to love so dearly… had gone from a ruthless to his daughter, to an abduction of children, to a trading in assassins. Maximillion Pegasus was a murderer.

Kisara opened her eyes. She was only reacting this way because of what she’d learned about her father. She would have reacted the same way at the death of any man. After all… Seto Kaiba was nothing to her now. Had been nothing to her for years. And the pain she now felt, from hip to shoulder– of course she had no feelings left for him. She was grieving for the loss of a father. For Pegasus. Not for… not because Kaiba was…

 _He is not dead._ The thought came both unbidden and demanding to her senses. _This… it isn't him, standing there. It couldn't be–_

And then the man opposing Yugi summoned the Blue-Eyes White Dragon.

**…**

Kaiba smirked, his face dyed blue with the screen before him, a thousand numbers and codes reflected in his eyes. Breaking into Pegasus's computers and files on the Duelist Kingdom Championship had been easy. However, the man did have _some_ security. And it was all centered around Yugi Mutou's dueling information. It was almost quaint. Or at least, it would have been quaint, if alongside the codes flashing before his eyes Kaiba wasn't also simultaneously envisioning all the different ways he would disembowel the man. "Fine by me," he whispered when his computer system hit the firewall. "Go ahead, Pegasus. Give it your best shot," a thin sneer cut his face, replacing the smirk like poison. "There isn't a computer system on the planet that I can't break into." Here, the creator of Duel Monster's had met his match.

It was as though Seto Kaiba truly had died to the world. Flesh and blood turned to data chips and information. Even the computer couldn't fully keep up. Just so, he worked in silence. Dried blood cracked on his hand as he threw his fingers across the keyboards. His wound had reopened. "So, spill it already,” the AI finally said. “How the hell are we going to use _Industrial Illusions'_ own satellite to bring down their computer?"

Kaiba chanced a glance back up to the screen, blinking, sheets and sheets of data funneling through his mind. "By bringing down the satellite itself," he said as though he was describing how he was going to shift gears in a car rather than how he was planning to bring a massive piece of machinery out of the Earth's orbit and down onto a precise spot of the globe.

_And down it came._

Right down on the computer mainframe of _Industrial Illusions_ in California. In a fiery blast. Kaiba sneer curled still further as he watched all of the screens that he'd hacked though Pegasus's satellite cut out – entirely destroyed. He almost wished that he could have seen the blast in person. No matter. It was sure to make the news by tomorrow. He'd find a recording later. "You should have known better than to screw with me, Pegasus," he growled. "I made my name by bringing heads of companies to their knees."

**…**

Croquet walked into the Surveillance Room. "Ms. Kisara. Are… Are you alright?"

Kisara flinched. She looked at him as though he'd burned her. Croquet. Her father’s bodyguard. Ever faithful. Ever sporting those trademark sunglasses. He had been her mentor and her dearest companion. He had taught her how to fly the helicopters and jets here on the island. He had stayed up with her watching whatever films she liked on the nights that her father was away. He had been the childhood friend she never had.

And now he was as much a kidnapper as her father, and she did not know where to turn. "Excuse me, Croquet," she said quietly, and her cane clanked loudly against the tile floor as she made to move past him and out of the room.

"Ms. Kisara, I…"

She met his eyes. Yes, she could _just_ see his eyes though those sunglasses. They were close enough together now, standing in the doorway of the room, that she could look right into his eyes. Whatever he had been about to say died on his lips.

"That's not him!" Mokuba's voice resounded in the silence, crackling through the speakers. So desperate. So broken. It filled the space between Kisara and Croquet. "Yugi, you know my brother! Everybody thinks he's a bad guy, but he's _not mean like this!_ He's my best friend in the whole world. That _thing's_ not him!" He was choking through tears. "You've just got to believe me!"

Kisara broke the eye contact, and continued from the room. Believe Mokuba? Oh. She wanted to. She wanted to believe that Seto Kaiba had not been 'a bad guy.' _Was_ not a bad guy. And was not the man whom Yugi Mutou was now facing.

Kisara wanted to believe that he was just the same as she was. That she still understood why he did what he did. Just as she had understood him that day at the gate.

She wanted to believe that he was not dead.

She was already some ways down the hall when she heard the last traces of the duel before Croquet turned off the audio in the room. "There are only three _Blue-Eyes White Dragon_ cards in the world," the ghost of Seto Kaiba said, "and they're all in my deck. Your grandpa had the fourth, but I ripped it up." Kisara stopped in the middle of the hall, and closed her eyes. _So, it was true…_ It had been one thing to know… to guess… and yet such a different thing to hear the confirmation. Hear it with his own voice. Was it his voice? "…But how could I possibly know that if I'm not really Seto Kaiba?" The sound went dead. Her lips parted. She swallowed. And walked on. Kisara had no answer.

**…**

"Now downloading Duel Data. You were right. Yugi Mutou is in _this_ duel."

Finally. Progress. Kaiba leaned back in his seat, shaking out his hands to keep them from cramping after the momentous amount of typing he'd been doing. He was bleeding underneath the nail of his right index finger. "Can you show it to me on screen?"

"My pleasure," the computer answered with satisfaction, loading a new image. "I think the thing you'll find _most_ interesting is the name of Yugi's opponent." The loading processes completed. Kaiba could now see a simulation of the duel in progress, along with all of the moves already made and the current statuses of both players. And there, plain as day, displayed on the computer screen, was his own name.

His fingers curled into fists. "What?!" He was on his feet again. "Is this your idea of a joke?!"

"I _never_ joke," the computer answered stiffly. An ironic statement, but a true one. "Sensors indicate that the opponent opposite Yugi is registered as _Seto Kaiba._ And he's using _your deck."_

 _Of course._ Kaiba narrowed his eyes. His deck had been missing by the time Kaiba climbed back up the cliff. It had been stolen for this purpose. His brain was once again kicked into overdrive. He had to think of something. Anything "…But without… Exodia… Yugi can't win," he said slowly. "He has no other cards left in his deck that can defeat the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Let alone the _two_ of them that his opponent can still draw." It was mad. Here, on the screen before him, Kaiba had the opportunity to sit back and watch as his deck and his strategies tore Yugi apart – his greatest dream realized.

And he could not let it happen.

" _Well then,_ I hope you have a plan," the computer pulled him from his musings matter-of-factly.

Kaiba started at the screen a moment longer. _"Yes,"_ he said, his strategy now fully formed in his mind. "But we've got to work fast. Yugi'll lose on the next attack from the Blue-Eyes… unless we decrease its power from here."

"Can we do that?" The AI actually sounded impressed.

"Oh yeah. Upload a virus into that monster's hollow computer. That dragon is about to get sick. _Real sick."_ The words caught in his chest, like a punch. What was he saying? What was he doing? _What if…_ The memory from only a year ago suddenly sparked in his mind. …Just one little year. _Those blue eyes, that shawl that was much too big for her hanging off her narrow shoulders… that constant stare…_ And again, _those eyes… timeless…_

He snapped out of it.

"Standing by…" A new screen appeared, now with the transparent outline of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon displayed on it, alongside its lifepoints: 3000. "But shouldn't we first wait to see Yugi's next move?" the computer offered.

"We can't afford to risk Yugi losing the duel," Kaiba practically spat out. He was doing this. And he was doing it now. And no nonsense regarding _… that girl…_ was going to get in his way. He would prove that – again, and again and again – if he had to. Even if the only one he was proving it to was himself. He would not relent. His lip curled. _"Upload."_

"Viral injection underway," the computer concluded. The clear silhouette of the Blue-Eyes on the screen began to tinge a sickening shade of _pink._

**…**

The cane clattered to the floor. Kisara stumbled… and then slammed against the wall of the hallway down which she'd been walking. Her hand clamped over her mouth, contorted in a silent scream. Her eyes went wide.

And through the pain, the unendurable fire that burned through her veins– she could have laughed.

He was alive. And he was doing something to the Blue-Eyes White Dragon. And the reason that she was affected was because it was _he_ who was doing it. Kisara had felt horror when the _impostor_ Kaiba had summoned the beast to the field. She had felt sick. But this… this was reality. This was… _real poison._ She rasped out a chuckle, pulling her hand away from her mouth to grip to the plasterwork on the wall. A thin, determined smile coursed across her face.

"Welcome back to the living then, Seto Kaiba," she gasped into the silence, her entire body trembling. Though, how long she would be here herself now seemed up for debate.

**…**

"I wish Yugi had waiting a few more seconds before moving." Alarm was thick in Kaiba's voice as his fingers skidded across the keyboard, the sound of typing becoming more and more like that of a waterfall, endless and unrelenting. "Isn't there anything you can do to get that computer virus uploaded _faster?"_

"We're already half way there. This is as fast as it goes!" The pink sickness was rising steadily, even as the computer spoke. "Viral implant now at 60%. But it doesn't seem to be working! The Blue-Eyes White Dragon is still showing no signs of weakness."

Kaiba stared frantically from window to window displayed on the giant screen. "Something is wrong."

**…**

… _Very wrong._

She'd slid down the side of the wall and onto the carpeted floor, breathing heavily. Kisara, her fingers shaking, pushed the buttons open on the front of her knitted cardigan and pulled down on the burlap dress, exposing the brace beneath it. There, through the mesh and the fabric, the sash of raw flesh… was glowing. _"Gugh,"_ she inhaled sharply, her fingers twitching involuntarily. Her head reeled and she let it thump back against the wall, her eyes blinking at nothing.

Her vision swam. Now she was looking over a playing field. And there, across the field from her… was the duelist, Yugi Mutou. And piercing through the chinks of her scales… those very same beams of light. And that selfsame _pain._ She roared. She was not going to let this conquer her! She was not going to let this bring her down. Did Seto Kaiba think she was just a tool? A meaningless object, to be _torn_ and _poisoned_ at his convenience. Was he truly so awful? Well, she would not let him. She would beat this _virus_ – and she knew she could.

Mokuba's voice swam into focus. _"Everybody thinks he's a bad guy, but he's not mean like this! He's my best friend in the whole world."_

Kisara was staring at the ornate ceiling of the hallway in the Pegasus Castle. She smiled _. So that’s it…_ She then realized something that she thought she had figured out a long time ago. But, clearly, the message had not sunk in deep enough. Again her vision swam.

Kisara was almost blinded by the light shining through her own scales. "Attack!" She was certain now and she had not been before – the voice was not Seto’s. She clamped her great jaw down. _No,_ she growled to herself. … _I don't think I will._ "What are you waiting for?! Attack!"

 _No._ She squeezed her eyes shut, resisting the command with every fiber of her being, even as she could feel the heat of the lightening welling up within her throat. Having realized what she had in that previous moment… Kisara had to buy him time.

**…**

"The virus is taking effect," the computer announced. "Blue-Eyes White Dragon's attack power is beginning to drop!"

"But it's still too strong," Kaiba answered, his eyes transfixed on the screen as the poison seeped through his beloved dragon. His most treasured card. "It has to get _weaker."_ It was the fear that the dragon would not weaken that was coursing through his body. He knew that. It was the fear that his plan would not work.

It had nothing to do with the fear of what would happen to _her_ if it did.

"Attack power is holding at 2000."

Kaiba's eyes widened. "But this should have worked…"

**…**

What Kisara had realized in that moment… was that none of this was about her. None of it. And just so, it shouldn't have been. A man had almost been murdered. A child had been kidnapped. The life of an entire family and their livelihood was in danger. And she… armed with the memories that she had only recently rediscovered… had dared to make it all about her. _You really are such a weak, thoughtless little girl, aren't you?_ She mused. He had never cared about her in this lifetime. She hardly knew if he'd cared about her in the last. She could only remember so much.

But she had always cared about him. She had always wanted him to be happy… And _this…_ this was how she could accomplish that.

Somewhere, far across the grounds of Duelist Kingdom, the front teeth of the Blue-Eyes White Dragon shattered as a White Lightening Attack smashed its way through the beast's jaw, determined to strike its mark.

The screen flashed before Kaiba's eyes. "The Blue-Eyes White Dragon is launching its attack."

"No!" Kaiba watched in horror as the simulation of the attack played out before him. He couldn't lose. Yugi couldn't lose. If Yugi lost this duel then he, Kaiba… lost everything… He might never see his little brother again… He slammed his hands down on the keyboard and, in the silence of the room, screamed out, _"YUGI."_

Yugi's eyes widened with awe in the face of the oncoming attack. _"Kaiba?"_ he whispered.

Again, the voice of Seto Kaiba resounded in his mind _"Yugi!"_

The Millennium Symbol, a golden eye, flashed into existence on Yugi's forehead, for he too was a wielder of a Millennium Item. The Millennium Puzzle. The boy with multicolored hair straightened up to face the attack full on. "Kaiba," the spirit of the Puzzle answered boldly.

The white hot lightening billowed around the duelist… and vanished.

 _And still at the end, I made it all about myself,_ Kisara mused with a smile, smothering the last of the weakened power within herself. Her head lulled. Her breath stilled.

_**…** _

"The Blue-Eyes White Dragon is destroyed. But the virus was not responsible."

Kaiba stared at the now vacant slot where the Blue-Eyes had been registered just moments before. "Then how? Did Yugi Mutou somehow do this?" _Or… what if it wasn't Yugi… what it if it was… someone else. Someone–_

"How could he?" the computer responded flatly. "It is _your_ deck."

Kaiba's breath caught in his throat. He didn't know how to feel. His hands were trembling. He opened his mouth to form words, and nothing came. Finally, "…It's… _the heart of the cards,"_ he said. "Yugi was right." Kaiba had no idea what he meant by that admittance. Or if he meant anything by it. But, caught up in the moment of abject relief and exhaustion, he believed what he said.

Then, a beeping resonated behind him. Someone was trying to hack into the room. Pegasus's men had found him. Seto Kaiba's work here was done. It was time to go.

**…**

"Hmm…" Pegasus mused. "It appears that young Yugi's nemesis, the _real_ Seto Kaiba, has come to his rescue. … I must admit that this little development is one twist that even I did not foresee."

Croquet straightened up, and put a finger to the earpiece he was carrying. Then, after a moment's silence, he swallowed. Pegasus knew what he was going to say before the man even turned to him. "I have some bad news, sir. The real Kaiba has eluded us once again. You were right. He was using a terminal in the Kaiba Mansion to access the _Industrial Illusions_ main frame." He paused for a moment. "…If I thought he was alive, I would have beefed up security," he added, trying to shift the blame somewhat.

"That's two escapes, Croquet. Must I lock you away, _again?"_ Pegasus responded quietly. Deadly, chilling silence followed. "Get me Kemo on the radio. It's time for him to get out of there, with the brat, while he still can."

**…**

The duel was almost over. The spirit of the Puzzle chuckled. Kaiba was alive. And, with his backing, the spirit and Yugi knew that nothing was impossible. "It's time to finish this duel," he called across the arena at the impostor. He pulled forth a card. The decisive card. "…with _Reborn the Monster!"_

The arena glittered, and a full, powerful roar echoed across the forest as a dragon at the peak of its strength reared its head upon the scene. Far away, in the castle, Kisara's fingers twitched, she coughed, and a breath of air heaved back through her lungs. Blue eyes cracked open once again, the spark of life returned.


	8. A Wandering Maze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The long awaited, long dreaded reunion.

Book I | **A Wandering Maze**

Duelist Kingdom Arc

Part IV

_Seto Kaiba: 18 years old_

_Kisara Pegasus: 16 years old_

**…**

A splash resonated far beneath him, in the water. It was hardly more than an echo on his ear. The pilot of his helicopter had been flying him in the wrong direction. Kaiba only noticed it because of the position of the moon. So, after a brief struggle, Seto Kaiba compelled the man from the helicopter and into the open ocean. He did not know or care if the fall killed him. And there was no land around for miles.

Hours passed.

Kaiba stared at the blinking lights on his horizon – unblinking. When had he last slept? He could hardly remember. He swallowed. That's right… food… He'd almost forgotten the taste of it by now. No matter. All that mattered was that dark silhouette of an island now looming against the dark sky. The helicopter's noise was like a muffled rumble against his headphones.

Duelist Kingdom. He was almost there. An hour at most… An hour… and he would be on the same plot of earth as his little brother…

 _I can't believe all of my business associates would turn on me after a single defeat._ That was a lie. Those men were like hyenas. Weak. But hungry. They had been waiting all of this time since he'd taken over the company… waiting for him to make a mistake. And they had pounced. _Then again, losing to Yugi has shaken_ ** _my_** _self-confidence too._ It was a grudging acknowledgment, but one Kaiba had to make. The loss had unnerved him. Shaken him. Caused him to make rash and stupid decisions, such as leave the company for a retreat in the first place – just after defeat too. The loss had sent him in a nie-comatose state. Hardly a good image. The loss had caused him to sideline Mokuba.

Kaiba narrowed his eyes, thinking back to that last duel which he'd monitored from the secret computer lab beneath his mansion. He still didn't understand it. How had that dragon been banished? The virus clearly hadn't been fast enough. But someone else had been. …How? _Maybe Yugi was right about putting heart into the game…_

A pair of blue eyes with white lashes batted before his already exhausted vision. Kaiba shook his head to clear his mind … _but I can't start second guessing myself now._ His grip tightening on the joystick. _Not when Pegasus has kidnapped my little brother. …No. If I'm gonna face off against Pegasus I have to rely on my_ ** _old_** _dueling instincts._

He exhaled, widening his eyes, and swallowed again. He was almost there. The dark mound rising out of the ocean was getting larger with every passing second. Now… he could even distinguish the outline of turrets. The castle. Where _he_ lived. Yes, Kaiba had to stick to his old methods. _That's the only chance I have of freeing Mokuba._ He inhaled slowly. Almost there… and then… _And once Mokuba is out of harm's way, I'll unleash my wrath on the vultures who conspired to take over my company._ A twisted smile curled his thin lip just at the thought. Oh, he was going to enjoy that part. _If Pegasus thought I would just sit idly by as they dismantled my life's work, he was_ ** _wrong._**

Half an hour now. At most. _I'll see to it that they all regret ever crossing Seto Kaiba._

**…**

The sound of the cane echoed loudly on the stone floor. The firelight of occasional torches threw her shadow on rugged stone, disfiguring it into so many monsters. Kisara didn't worry however. She knew these dungeon passages. She'd played in them often when she was younger. Had explored them. She knew where there were cameras, and where there weren't. She had always had fun down here… had never related these passages to darkness, torture, or death… After all, she had never once dreamed that this place had actually been used for anything other than an elaborate backdrop for the suits of armor that haunted the halls.

Sometimes they'd even had Halloween parties down here.

How long ago had the Pegasus family moved this castle, stone by stone, up from the landscapes of England and over to this little island on the coast of California? At the turn of the previous century. At least. So… at least one hundred years where Kisara had been certain that the place remained unoccupied. It had left Europe before either of the World Wars ravaged the European continent, so nothing had been done here then…

Kisara had always been convinced, without really thinking about it, that the dungeons below the castle of Duelist Kingdom had remained vacant since at least the 15th century.

She stopped. The echoing of the cane stopped. The water, dripping from the walls one droplet at a time, continued. Now, however… staring at the thoroughly modern bars on the cell in front of her, Kisara recognized just how wrong she had been all these years. She inhaled shakily. And felt a pain shoot down her spine. It had taken little enough observation to realize at what time the guards liked to sneak off duty to catch the game on the television.

Kisara winced, and shut her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, she peered into the depths of the cell she'd come face to face with. There, in the darkness… lay Mokuba.

How different he looked now from that proud, obstinate little fellow in that tower not many days before. She could hardly see him in this light… a broken small figure. Like a toy thrown violently against the wall, and forgotten there. Attached to his feet were two great manacles. Ball and chain. She was almost surprised that his skinny legs were not small enough to slip through them.

_My father did this._

Her breath seemed loud in this stale air. As did her footsteps. The pain in her side was getting worse. It was probably due to the dampness. When all of this stopped she was going to have to take a lie down. Kisara leaned into the bars, resting herself on them, her head nestled between them.

For a moment she didn't say a word. She merely stood, leaning her weight on her cane, and observed. _This is all my fault. If I hadn't encouraged him to escape… if I hadn't given him the map by which he eluded his captors for so long… he might still be in the relative comfort of the North Tower… but this…_ When Kisara found out that Mokuba had been taken here, she scarcely believed it. She shuddered.

Kisara once stood just like this, at the gate of an orphanage, six years before. "Hey."

Mokuba's form flinched in the darkness. Chains clanked. Then, he raised his head, and met her eyes.

"…you," he rasped.

Kisara took a steadying breath. "Yeah…me." There was silence for a moment. Then Kisara, as gingerly as she could, bent herself into a crouch, her cane scraping the ground as she slowly lay it down beside her. "I brought you something," she said, lifting the lunchbox which she'd been holding in her other hand.

He blinked at her slowly. "…what is it?" As he looked up at her his head thumped against the rock wall behind him. If his hair had been a mess when she last saw him, it was nothing to the state it was in now. And his cheeks looked so hollow.

She smiled weakly. "Dinner."

The water dripped off the walls. "Ms. Pegasus… you're not supposed to be here, are you?"

"Yes, well, neither are you," she answered.

He looked up at her and, through the mud and misery caked on his face, gave her the smallest of smiles. It broke her heart.

She offered the lunchbox through the bars. "I got some clementine, a few cheese-sticks, a sausage and an apple juice box," she whispered.

His smile was somewhat more successful than hers. "You're an angel, Ms. Pegasus."

Now she managed her own wry smile. "Kisara. And hardly. Should I throw this to you or…?"

"I'll come to you," he said, heaving himself onto his feet.

Kisara tried to lean further in through the bars. She felt a sharp pain shoot up her side. _"Ungh,"_ her arm wavered.

"Are you okay?" His chains rattled as Mokuba forced against the weights to take a step forward. He reached for the lunchbox, and Kisara stretched for it to reach his outstretched hands, grateful to relieve herself of even so slight a load.

"Fine," she replied curtly. There was an almost childlike silence between them in the next moment as Mokuba zipped the lunchbox open. He, excited to see what he had gotten. She, excited to see if he liked it.

"…you also brought me chocolate."

"Oh… yeah. Forgot about that." She smiled.

The dungeon was filled with quiet sniffling. Mokuba's head was bent and his shoulders shaking. The tears dripped off his nose into the lunchbox.

"Oh Mokuba…" She leaned in as far through the bars as she could. She could not reach him. Her fingers grasped at cold air. Weak. Useless. "I am so sorry. If I had known… I could never have thought they would put you… I should never have helped you…"

"No." Mokuba's head shot up. "No….no. _Thank you._ No one's… I haven't eaten chocolate since I was really little." Kisara could remember – remember as if it were only yesterday – how she smiled just like that, with that very same broken smile, at this very boy's older brother.

She looked down at the floor. "Well…It looks like I'll have to think of another way to get you out of here. But this is the lowest dungeon in the castle, so this is pretty much as bad as it can get, in case I mess up again."

Mokuba snorted, setting the lunchbox down on the ground next to him, though only after fishing out three chocolates. "That's reassuring." He was already regaining some of his snark. "Be careful with that help."

The irony. "Oh…" how that sad little smile could once more pull at her mouth. "I'll do my best.” _I shouldn't even be trying to help you at all, frankly. From the little I can remember of my past, I have damned everything I ever touched and cared for. I…_ A spasm of pain rattled through her chest. _I'm quite the curse of a monster, actually._

Her eyes glinted in the darkness.

**…**

He knew that she couldn't have left him a blanket. If it was found out, then she would be found out, and there would be no more lunch boxes for him. So, in the cold dungeon, he slept without a blanket. And yet, because of how wonderful dinner had been, and how nice Kisara Pegasus had been, Mokuba drifted off to sleep with more ease than he had in weeks.

As he dozed, a dream which had not come to him in years washed over him. He was a little boy again, in his bedroom at the Kaiba Mansion. And he was drawing a _Blue-Eyes White Dragon_ card for Seto. Sure, it was nothing like the authentic card, but Seto had been so unhappy recently. Of course, he wouldn't let anyone see. He hid it completely. But Mokuba could tell. So, he was drawing this card to make him feel better! He knew just how much Seto wanted this card. And, Mokuba thought that, if he drew one, it would help Seto always remember his dream of having a _real_ Blue-Eyes someday. He grinned down at the paper, choosing one crayon over another. He would make it the absolute best card that he could! In fact, Mokuba thought, it was looking so fantastic that it was almost as though the paper itself was shining, and the dragon would fly off the page.

A roar rocked through the dream.

Mokuba sat back in awe as light flooded the room and suddenly, there it was– the Blue-Eyes White Dragon in all its mighty glory. It looked down upon the little boy, stretched out its neck, flexed its great wings and once more roared out its presence. Mokuba smiled. Oh, he loved this dream.

He pushed himself up off ground and scrambled over to the great beast. It, in turn, shifted its mighty weight to ease closer to the ground and allow the little boy to hoist himself between its shoulder blades.

"Wooah!" Mokuba's entire body pitched as the dragon lurched beneath him back onto its hind legs. He rocked forward and grabbed a hand onto one of the scales protruding from its shoulders. A thrill of excitement coursed through him. He looked up at the full length windows that lined his room, just as they burst open with a gust of night wind.

The muscles underneath Mokuba grew taught. Another lurch and he and the Blue-Eyes were soaring through the air. The wind whipped through his long hair and Mokuba could have screamed with joy. Instead, he clung onto the dragon's shoulder blades all the more tightly, and let his eyes slide shut.

This was his favorite dream– the dream where the Blue-Eyes White Dragon would appear and take him away from all of his unhappiness! No more step-father. No more dungeon. Only one thing could make this more complete than it already was.

_I always secretly dreamed that Seto and his Blue-Eyes would fly me away from any danger, as far as we could go!_

At that moment, Mokuba felt a warm weight at his back. He turned in his seat, and there was Seto, right behind him astride the Blue-Eyes. They weren't little children anymore. Mokuba was as he was now. And so was Seto. Only that he was smiling. He was happy. "The Blue-Eyes did it!" Mokuba cried out. "The Blue-Eyes saved us, Seto!"

Seto smiled. "Yes." He looked past Mokuba, to the dragon. "I should never have doubted you."

"No… You shouldn't have."

Mokuba blanched. He knew that voice. He turned back to look ahead of him, and he looked into the dragon's eye. Her sorrowful, pained eye. His mouth went dry. "Kisara?"

The dragon roared out, not in triumph, but in agony. The scales around her waist ripped apart and flew up into Mokuba's face, as though torn by some great force. He was falling and tumbling, and the scales cut into Mokuba's hands and eyes. Then came the sudden crash, darkness, and the sound of a thousand panes of shattering glass.

Mokuba woke in a cold sweat in a colder dungeon cell.

**…**

This was such a waste of time.

As Kaiba’s extraordinary luck would have it, the same patch of grass on which he'd chosen to land his helicopter had been the one on which Yugi Mutou and his friends had made camp. There were perhaps a hundred duelists on this island, all participating in Pegasus's Duelist Kingdom Tournament, but it was _this_ duelist, and his cohort, that Kaiba had to land upon. Literally.

At first, when Yugi detached himself from the rest of his friends and approached him, it was almost cordial. Before Kaiba could hardly say a sentence Yugi was holding out Kaiba's deck, offering it back to him, saying that he'd kept it safe. He thanked Kaiba for helping with the duel against the impostor. As though he needed no confirmation that it had been Kaiba who had helped him. No confirmation that they were on good terms.

Not knowing what else to do, Kaiba reached out a hand, and took the deck. "…Thanks."

And then the bullshit started.

The friendship speeches. The nonsense. Then one of Yugi's friends had gone and grabbed him by the collar. Joey, Yugi had called him. Joey Wheeler, from school. A boy with a mop of blond hair and a very annoying slur to his speech. He grabbed Kaiba's collar in his fists and placed himself between Kaiba and the castle. That was a mistake. Underslept and overanxious, Kaiba did not want this idiot in his face, creasing his coat, and yelling about how they'd all been screwed over my Pegasus. Was that supposed to be a _surprise?_

"Nice grip," he growled, taking the offender’s wrist in his hand. "Let me show you mine." With a twist and a shove, he threw Wheeler to the ground as though he was so much garbage.

Some more bullshit then issued forth, with a few cries of indignation. Wheeler made some loud and _very_ stupid comments about Kaiba's skill as a duelist. And, as Kaiba looked back at him, he saw the perfect guinea pig on whom to try out his new Duel Disk system.

Ten minutes later, the duel was almost over.

"Your Red-Eyes is a powerful dragon," Seto smirked. His Duel Disks had gone off without a hitch. It was satisfying to know that, even in his solitude, after suffering a defeat at the hands of a boy half his height, he could still make such an invention. And then he drew the only card that could make him more satisfied still. He lifted it, relishing the pride of having it back at the tip of his fingertips. "But its ferocity pales in comparison to _my_ beast." He saw Yugi blanch. _He_ knew what was coming.

Kaiba placed the card on the disk, and swung it out into the field. "The legendary _Blue-Eyes White Dragon!"_ A look of absolute fear played across Wheeler’s face. Even by the moonlight, Kaiba could see him turn pale. The beast rose between them amidst a shower of sparks and the humming of the circular disk which simulated it. This was the first time that Kaiba had, himself, played the card since his duel with Yugi. _It's good to be back, sweetheart._ "Blue-Eyes White Dragon," he called out to the creature, "White Lightning Attack, _now!"_

**…**

Kisara, sleeping on a couch, jolted awake, her eyes wide open. _He's here._

**…**

The simulation of scent built into the Duel Disk left a pungent aroma of burning flesh in the air.

Joey Wheeler was crushed. Kaiba was leaving. He was done. The Duel Disk was clearly a success. The dweebs were outraged. He almost felt pity for them, and he fixed his eyes on his rival – the boy whose victory over him had begun all of this. "Open your eyes. Even with your prodigious talents Yugi, you'll be defeated like all the others." He took back the Duel Disk that Wheeler had used.

What else was there to say? He was almost out of the clearing and into the woods leading to the castle when Yugi called him back. "Kaiba, we may not agree with each other's methods, but we both understand that Pegasus must be _stopped."_ Kaiba halted, staring straight ahead of him into the underbrush. "I hope you succeed in rescuing your brother," Yugi added more gently.

Kaiba turned and looked him in the face at that. Yugi was sincere. "And I hope you succeed in your ventures," he said frankly. "Let's just hope our paths don't cross again before this is all over." With a final nod he continued on his way, towards his goal. Towards the castle.

Standing on a balcony, looking over the dark forest area of his island and gently swirling a glass of red wine, Pegasus chucked. "I can _sense_ you Kaiba," he whispered, feeling the young man's presence through the power of his eye. "But are you hunting for me, or am _I_ hunting _you?"_ An bloodthirsty smile curled his lips.

On the other side of the great room leading out to the balcony, standing no further than the threshold of the door, Kisara teetered in her pajamas, leaning on her cane, unnoticed, hearing everything. As quietly as she came, she stepped back into the shadows.

**…**

It was day. And, finally, Kaiba felt like he was making some headway towards Pegasus’s castle. He could now count the number of windows panning along the wall he faced. _I've got to be on my guard. His goons are everywhere._ He cast his eyes around, continuing at his brisk pace. _But they won't stop me. Nothing will._ He reached up the hand not holding his briefcase with his precious Duel Disks, and clicked open the locket with contained Mokuba's photograph from when they were children. From the orphanage.

He still remembered the day that Mokuba carefully folded that photograph in two, tore it along the seam, and placed each of the halves into a separate locket. He remembered how Mokuba carefully placed Seto's locket around his neck himself.

 _Mokuba's life's at stake. And nothing's more important than my little brother._ His grip tightened around the locket. _After our parents died, I promised I'd always take care of him. And I will. He's always looked up to me…_ Even if he had been the only one. _And I won't disappoint him. Not now. Not ever._

"So," a voice from Kaiba's periphery drew his attention. "It's Seto Kaiba, searching for your little brother no doubt. It's been a long time, _Mr. Kaiba."_ Kemo, his old bodyguard, stepped out from behind a tree, holding a gun. So, he too betrayed him in Seto's absence. Who was he working for now? Pegasus? The board of directors? Here were new questions.

And yet, all Kaiba could think as Kemo pointed that gun at his face was how _stupid_ that hair had always looked and always would look.

All the same, Kaiba froze. Kemo's feet made the only sound as he stepped through the brambles, closing the short distance between them. The air was filled with the crack of branches and the rustle of leaves. Kaiba's focus went from the forest undergrowth to the gun. The metal now pressed against his skin was cold. "It's too bad we had to meet again under circumstances like this," the man said with unconcealable relish.

Mutely, mechanically, Kaiba let the locket slip back through his fingers, and put his hands up.

"I'm going to take you to Mr. Pegasus now," Kemo said quietly, threateningly.

Kaiba could hardly have helped the self-assured smirk that hooked itself onto his upper lip. "And you really think I'll just _go_ with you?"

"If you refuse, I'll have to use force," Kemo answered, agitated with the lack of a rise he was getting out of the young CEO.

 _And wouldn't that just break your little heart._ "Why don't you just try it." Kaiba's jaw set. He knew what was coming. It wasn't difficult to predict the actions of a lumbering oaf.

"Tish. _Die then."_ Kimo’s finger twitched to pull the trigger and blow Seto Kaiba's brains out on the forest path.

Seto would hardly have been the reigning Champion of Duel Monsters for as long as he had without picking up a few card tricks. With one flick of the wrist he sent a card that had been previously hidden – quite literally _up his sleeve_ – soaring through the air to stop the gun's cocking mechanism. The gun jammed. In a flash Kaiba grabbed Kemo's hand and, as he'd done with Wheeler, twisted it in his vice-grip. The gun clattered to the forest floor, and Kaiba felt a satisfying crunch beneath his fingers. He was just able to see, and appreciate the coincidence, that the card that had saved his life was _The Goddess of Reversal._

He shoved Kemo forward. The latter stumbled, clutching at his injured hand. Kaiba causally leaned over and swiped up the gun, his card still quivering in its lock. "Well, scum, looks like you just made me damage one of my rarer cards. And here I thought I was going to go easy on you."

Kemo was no threat anymore. Whatever semblance of rational thought he'd had – and there had been very little of it – he now lost completely. In a blind fury Kemo balled his good hand into a fist. "You're coming with me!" In a stupid, animal-like rage, he charged. It was almost boring.

Kaiba dropped down and elbowed him in the stomach. Then, though Kemo was certainly the larger of the two men, he threw him to the ground. Boring. And stupid. And a waste of time. And Kaiba had no time to waste. "Actually," he whispered, _"you're_ coming with _me."_ He walked over to where Kemo was struggling to get up, took him by the collar, and pulled him into a standing position.

He twisted the ex-bodyguard's arm behind his back and relished the grunt of pain that emanated from him. He forcefully angled Kemo's face up to look to the pile of rock and mortar where his new master now lived. Where they had Kaiba’s little brother. "You're gonna help me find Mokuba, wherever Pegasus has him," Kaiba whispered, now turning the man’s own gun against him. "And you're going to start," he nodded, his eyes fixed at the point above the tree line, "by getting me into _that_ castle."

**…**

"You were the dragon."

The slow tap of the cane as it approached his cell stopped. Mokuba, however, kept his eyes fixed on the shadows where he knew she stood. He did not know how he was so certain, and it was quite possible that he was going crazy. That was what he had told himself for the last many hours of darkness.

And then he heard the sound of her cane stop. And he knew he had been right.

Finally, after a long moment, she stepped into the light. White hair. Blue eyes. He should have seen it before. And he knew that the awe in her eyes must be mirrored that in his. Then, in a whisper, she confirmed to Mokuba Kaiba what Kisara hardly dared confirm to herself. "…I was the dragon."

Mokuba's throat seized up.

"…How did you know?"

"I saw it. You were there. In my dreams." Mokuba now examined her with nie-disbelief. Here she was. His hero, standing before him, leaning on a cane with one hand and carrying a morning-lunchbox in another.

Her mouth twitched. "Oh. _Dreams."_ She hobbled the rest of the distance to the cell and stretched out the lunchbox to him. He took it, emptied it on the ground, and zipped it shut again.

"Well …I told you before that the opportunity to repay the favor your brother did me never arose." She swallowed. Would Mokuba think she was mad? Did it really matter now? They were standing, two children, in a dungeon at the heart of a lonely island where her father was king. Everything here was mad. "Well… not entirely. You see, I held deep… _affection_ for your brother once." She looked up to see Mokuba's stumped expression. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but take on faith for now that I had reason enough, and emotion enough behind the feeling. And… after I met him, six years ago, for some time after, I could think of little but him. I would fall asleep here, in this great new house of mine," she looked about at the moist stone walls, illuminated by torches of fire, “and think about the two of you, and wonder how you were. He had looked so miserable when we met… I worried about him. I wanted to help him. I thought I could help him. And in… _dreams,_ I did." She smiled. "I soared above the clouds. I found you in whatever unhappy states you were in. And I flew with you through the sky. Sometimes, as sleep overtook me… I could almost hear you calling. And I… I must sound like an absolute, deranged, pathetic girl right now." She concluded lamely, not daring to look Mokuba in the eye.

Mokuba could do nothing but stare. In all those dreams, where he had stared up at the Blue-Eyes, pretending that there might be someone else in this world who cared, he had never even _thought,_ even with _his_ imagination, that the Blue-Eyes might be staring back.

And then it hit him. "You still _are_ the dragon."

Her head snapped back to look at him. "Why do you say that? It was a dream."

Mokuba looked to her cane. To her waist. And then back into her eyes. _"…Show me."_

There was a moment of silence between them. "…Aren't you the clever one." Stiffly, shifting her weight, Kisara shrugged off one shoulder of her blue cardigan and pulled down gingerly on the burlap dress. Just enough to show the hospital brace.

Mokuba blinked at it, his fears confirmed. "Oh my g…" he finally whispered. "How big is the…"

"From one hip, across the other shoulder, and down the back. It was a full body friction-burn to the soul."

"Will it ever heal?"

By the look on her face it was clear that it was an issue she had not dared to think on. "…I don't know. I hope so." Kisara smiled at him brokenly. All Mokuba could do was stare back in awe, in wonder, and in horror. She looked at her watch. "I should go. They guard will be back in another minute. And I–"

Mokuba reached out his hand to her. She reached for him. The chains clanked. They could not reach one another. "I'd break you out, but the alarm would go off, and we know how well that worked last time, and I am so sorry for my father–"

" _I'm_ sorry. For my brother."

They stood there, two children, reaching for one another, both caught in something so much bigger than themselves.

"I'll be back. Better pass that lunchbox to me, unless you want to sit on it to hide it."

"Brilliant."

She smiled, took the box… and Mokuba watched as the mighty Blue-Eyes limped off into the darkness.

**…**

Holding Kemo at gunpoint, Seto followed his unwillingly-recruited guide to a door discreetly hidden at the base of the castle. Without a word Kemo entered a numbered password and the door slid open. Kaiba wasn't an idiot. He knew that, the moment he was able, Kemo would turn on him. He knew that he was walking into the lion's den with nothing to protect him. He knew that he had nothing but enemies in this mound of stone.

 _A girl, dutifully holding onto Pegasus's arm at a gala, once again flashed before Kaiba’s eyes._ His grip on the gun tightened.

Kaiba stepped into the castle after Kemo. There, standing before him, as though he had expected nothing different from what he saw, was Pegasus's right-hand man, and Chief of Security. If he had been guarding the door and awaiting Kemo's return, and if the last thing he expected to see was Seto Kaiba, he did not let on.

Kaiba didn't know his name. But, then again, he didn't need to know his name to shoot him. The man made a sweeping gesture with his arm, allowing Kemo and Kaiba to walk past him. "Why hello, Mr. Kaiba," he said. He had a voice like sandpaper. "What a pleasant surprise. Are you here to see Master Pegasus?" Kaiba hated that he couldn't see the man's eyes behind those dark glasses. Why was he even wearing dark glasses inside. "Well, unfortunately, only those with ten star-chips are permitted to meet Mr. Pegasus. Even you, Mr. Kaiba, are no exception. Now, if you don't mind, there is a room for you in the annex…"

That's right. His name was Croquet. Kaiba remembered. What a different greeting this was from the one he'd gotten a year before at the International Duel Monsters Tournament. It was almost laughable. No. Not laughable. What was laughable was that all of these morons he'd met thus far on the island were all playing some _game._ Star-chips. Winning a tournament. Meeting the boss. What was laughable was that any of them – Yugi, Wheeler, Kemo, Croquet – they still thought he was kidding around.

Kaiba slammed his bulletproof briefcase into Croquet's jaw. Blood splattered everywhere.

"Mr. Croquet!" Kemo flinched at the sickening crack that ripped through the air. "Kaiba, you–" He balled his good hand into a fist again, as though to attack.

Methodically, Kaiba put the briefcase down. Then, before Croquet could even hit the ground Kaiba snatched him by the front of his jacket and held him, like a cat that caught a bird in mid-air. He pressed the gun to his temple. Croquet's glasses had been knocked off. Kaiba could now see fear in his eyes. He rather liked it.

"Careful, Kemo," he whispered in the silence. "It's because of _KaibaCorp's_ special employee training that you even know how to hold a weapon. Did you ever finish the course?" He smiled down at Croquet. "Watch… I'll teach you how to fire a gun right now…" He pressed the gun more firmly down into his victim's face.

"S-stop! Kemo!" The man almost gagged on the blood issuing from his mouth. "Stand down! Look at his eyes. He's serious." Sweat mixed with blood on the middle aged man's face. And this was all that Pegasus had? Ridiculous.

After a moment's hesitation, Kemo lowered his fists begrudgingly. Kaiba smirked, disarmed Croquet and aimed his now two guns at the two men before him. So pathetic. "Carry my briefcase to a guestroom," he nodded at Croquet. "You'll be my hostages until I get what I want."

He knew he was fooling himself with that one. Pegasus would never trade a commodity like Mokuba for these two ingrates, even if one of them was his oldest and most loyal bodyguard. No. Kaiba would have to find another way of getting what he wanted. But that was alright. Kaiba often heard that he had a very _persuasive_ personality.

**…**

Kaiba sat back in an ornate armchair. There was one small sane part of him that wanted to simply pause everything and ask _what the hell am I doing? How do I think this is going to come out well for me?_ But he was winging it now. And there was no going back. There, against the wall, was Kemo, whom Kaiba had pinned down with the barrel of the gun. And there, on the floor, with his arms tied behind his back – Kemo was _such_ an obliging man – was Croquet, his head pinned down between the top and bottom of Kaiba's indestructible briefcase. And Kaiba's foot was on the lid of that briefcase, applying pressure.

Now that he reconsidered the situation, things could have been worse.

"Curse you, Seto Kaiba," Kemo hissed across the room. Ouch. That one would hurt for a while.

Kaiba raised an eyebrow. Maybe he should try and get up. Rise to the insult. He placed some more weight on his foot.

"H-Help," Croquet wheezed, his entire body flinching at the mere motion of the briefcase’s lid.

Yes. Things could have been a lot worse. If he was honest, Seto rather liked this arrangement.

"Kaiba! Let him go!" Kemo whispered. He had moved from curses to demands. Someone should make this man head of national diplomacy.

Kaiba smiled. They didn't think he was joking now. That was a start at least. "I know you cowards have taken Mokuba prisoner." Kaiba uttered the first words he'd said in a while. "Are you still going to deny it, even with your lives at stake?"

"I– I don't know… I– I'm telling you the truth," Croquet whispered out, splattering blood with every word. A loyal dog it seemed.

"I already took all my important cards out of that briefcase, and there's a protected compartment for the Duel Disks, you know… If you insist on continuing with this deception, your blood will be easy enough to wash off…" He saw Croquet's eyes widen in horror. No? No words? Kaiba again stepped on the lid of the case, compressing Croquet's head. Hard.

Croquet opened his mouth in a silent scream of pain.

"That will be _quite_ enough," a voice with the tone of a reed pipe went through the room, and commanded total attention.

Kaiba looked up. There, standing at the open door that he was _sure_ he had locked, was Kisara. White hair awry, exhausted blue eyes, leaning her full weight on a cane, she stood before him. He stared into her face. Two unbidden thoughts rose to the forefront of his mind. She was gorgeous. And she looked terrible.

Kisara closed the door behind her, balancing gingerly on her cane as she moved. This was not the same girl who had stood before him one year before at the gala, holding a glass of sparkling water. She was wearing a dark blue knitted cardigan that hung over a loose burlap dress. His eyes traveled along the arm resting on her cane, to her other arm gingerly resting across her waist. Had she been in some sort of accident?

…Had Pegasus done something to _her_ as well?

For a moment, he saw red. His foot twitched, as he almost made to get up and go to her. Croquet hissed in pain. Kisara, whose eyes had been equally riveted to Kaiba, looked to the captive man. Without a word, she crossed the room. Her cane let of a muffled 'clunk' 'clunk' 'clunk' on the carpet. Finally, she was standing right in front of Kaiba. He remained seated.

Six years ago, as children, they had stood face to face for the first time. Many words were spoken. Most of them abandoned. One year ago, again, they had stood face to face with one another. No words were spoken. And he had fled the scene. Now, once more, they stood face to face. What words would she use now?

He watched how she bent herself and wrapped a hand around Croquet's arm. She winced with the bending. It hurt her. Then, her hand fastened, she looked back up into Kaiba's eyes. That look… it brooked no argument.

Kaiba lifted his foot, and uncrossed his legs.

He watched as, riddled by pain, she used her cane to help Croquet back to his feet. He let out a weak whisper of _"Ms. Kisara."_ The man had an open gash on his chin, and a deep purple bruise was pluming around his eye. Kaiba looked from him, to Kisara. Her face was blank.

And it made Kaiba's stomach curled with something he would not acknowledge as shame. Her face was _blank._ She showed no emotion. No reaction. And that was why he knew… she was horrified. After all, it was the very face he set to horror.

"I'd keep that gun pointed on Kemo, if I were you."

Her mild, almost conversational tone snapped his attention back to the here and now. He looked across the room at Kemo, whom he had nearly forgotten. The man had been trying to edge out of the room unnoticed. Kaiba snarled, and fixed the gun back onto his chest. Kemo stilled.

Kisara undid the cord that bound Croquet's hands together. Then, she took out a handkerchief from the pocket of her cardigan and dabbed at his face, not sparing Kaiba a second glance. "If you were going to interrogate anyone you should have done so to Kemo." It was almost a casual reprimand, as though he had walked out of the house in the wrong tie. "He would have broken in minutes."

Now, atop Kaiba's shame, Kisara also made him feel stupid. He swallowed.

"You haven't addressed a word to me in over six years," she finally said, smiling up at Croquet reassuringly. Most of the blood was been mopped up. The suit, however, was ruined. Kisara re-pocketed her handkerchief. "Don't you think I'm overdue for a hello?"

She turned and, with a weak smile, looked back to Kaiba. It was not the gentle, unguarded smile she had given him six years ago. Or even one.

Something was wrong. She wasn't just injured. Now, as he sat only feet away from her, he saw her skin was a sickly, paste-like texture. The bags under her eyes were alarming. It was almost as if… almost as if she had been _infected_ by something. His stomach churned, and he pushed the absurd thought that had crept into his mind back out again.

Kaiba’s jaw set and his eyes narrow. She was the daughter of his enemy. _"Hello,_ Ms. Pegasus," he sneered. It was almost as though, to the canvas of that blank expression on her face, he heard something crack inside of her. Inside of both of them. And yet… he could not stop. "So, did your _daddy_ send you to negotiate? Couldn't come himself? How has it been, having my little brother here as prisoner? Did you _enjoy_ having a little hostage playmate?"

Kisara’s lips parted, and Seto realized that he was terrified of what she would say. Terrified of how she would answer. He… was terrified of her. However, he never would know what Kisara would have said, because at that moment an alarm shook through the entire castle and to their very cores. Kemo had not been trying to get to the door. He had been trying to get to one of the small, decorative tables, each of which held three or four ornate jewelry boxes. Except for the one that Kemo had opened. That one held a button.

Kaiba aimed his gun. He was going to kill him right here on this Turkish rug.

" _No,"_ Kisara grabbed his arm, yelling over the alarm. "We have to go. Now! Follow me!”

Kaiba looked at Kemo, look at her, and looked back at Kemo. His lowered his arm, and shot the man in the foot. "I do _not_ want him following us!" Kaiba yelled over the alarm in response to Kisara's indignant expression. It seemed like a decent compromise to _him_ at least.

… _What the hell was going on?_

Everything was noise, and flashing lights, and scraping canes, and shouting guards. They were out in the hallway. Croquet did not follow. Then they were at a tapestry. Then they were in a hidden passage.

It was dark, and dungeon-like, and the halls were endless.

More guards. Kisara grabbed Kaiba and, with very little hesitation, shoved him into the niche behind a suit of armor, quickly following after. They held their breath as the sound of running feet and shouting echoed off the walls. Kaiba tried desperately to ignore how she was entirely pressed against him, or how she clung to him to keep from falling back out into view or tipping the suit of armor over. …Was that a brace that he felt across her waist?

He felt her breath on his neck. He swallowed.

They were off again. On, and on, and on they went, not stopping until the alarm, as suddenly as it had begun, went silent. It wasn't until then, in some dimly lit route of roughly cut stone, that Kaiba realized, somewhere along the way, he had grabbed Kisara's arm and pulled it over his shoulders to help support her weight in their flight. His ears were still ringing.

His hand was resting gingerly on her hip.

"I think," she gasped for air. "I think we lost them…"

Mutely, carefully, he helped her into a sitting position against the wall. Kisara hissed, and allowed her cane to clatter by her side. It was odd. In this moment she reminded him so much of the little wisp of a thing he had seen at the gate all those years before.

She panted, fighting through the pain. "We'll be alright here, for a while," she finally said. "We're well away from anything important. So, no cameras here. I think the only one who knows about this passage is Croquet. I don't even think my father knows. And I doubt he ever cared enough to use his Eye on Croquet to–"

"What happened to you?" Kaiba finally asked the question that had been on the tip of his tongue since he first saw her. He crouched down next to her.

Kisara continued to breathe heavily. She pressed a hand into her side, her face contorted. They were alone now. Even at the gate they had not been entirely alone. But they were alone now, in this semi-darkness, with mere inches between them. She took a final, steadying breath. Brushing her hair out of her face – all but one obstinate strand – she looked up at him. "Seto…" she finally whispered. The use of his name sent a shiver run down his spine. "If you could ask one question, and only one question, what would it be?"

She smiled bitterly at him, and he knew that she knew the question.

He swallowed. "Will you take me to Mokuba?"

After all, this was not about the two of them. It never had been.

**…**

"This is where I leave you," Kisara said abruptly, a few steps behind Kaiba. He turned to look at her. She nodded in the direction they had been going. "Mokuba's cell is just ahead. You'll have to knock out a guard or two, but I somehow doubt that's a problem for you." He nodded. "…I was expecting there to be more security down here, considering the party we threw upstairs." She smiled. "Maybe Croquet decided to do me a good turn after all."

"Why are you leaving?" Kaiba asked. Kisara smiled. The true reason was that she was leaving because of what Mokuba knew of her now. And what he might say in front of his older brother. However, Kisara could see in his face that, by instinct, he wanted to ask if this was some sort of trap. It wasn't. He knew that. Hence, he didn't ask.

Instead, he asked, "Why did you help me?"

She had resolved on answering none of his questions. But that one was just so obvious. She blinked at him. "Because I promised," Kisara answered simply. There. She'd said it. It had been the unaddressed, unspoken event that transpired between them six years ago, and she now gave it a voice.

Kaiba stared at her. Suddenly, he closed the distance between them, and he looked down into her face. At the back of her mind Kisara couldn't help but notice just how tall he'd gotten in the last six years. She continued, in a whisper. "You promised to save me. I promised to save you. That was the pact we struck."

She stayed perfectly still as his eyes ran up and down her form. "From the look of it," he finally answered, "I didn't fulfill my end all too well... It's funny, because I always thought that you were the one who'd forgotten about…" Their eyes met. He swallowed. "Look. Don't take this the wrong way, but it looks like you've been b–"

"–I could say the same for you," she answered with an echo from so many years ago.

They took that moment, for themselves, saying nothing, not touching, not moving. They simply looked into each other's eyes, and feasted on a sight they had each denied themselves for years.

The moment passed. Kaiba nodded. Kisara straightened herself. And then he turned around and continued down the hall, and she turned as well, and went back the way she had come.

The 'clunk' 'clunk 'clunk' echoed into silence.

**…**

Fire sputtered in large stone jars in this part of the dungeon. It was occupied. Kaiba could see the long shadows of two guards stretching out across the hall. He dropped down on them. One of the men reached for his gun. Two well-placed strikes later, and Pegasus's guards were out cold on the floor. Kaiba picked the large ring of keys off one of their belts.

He saw the bars before he saw the boy. Then, he came into view. There were no words, no actions, for the emotions that contracted Kaiba's stomach. The manacles. The filth. And there… like an abandoned puppet… his little brother. Kaiba stopped and stood before the cell. After a moment his little brother shifted.

"…Kisara, is that you?"

Seto's blinked at the boy in shock. She had been here? She had taken care of him? Seto wanted to speak, but the effort to unstick his throat was monstrous. He took hold of the bars. "Mokuba…" he finally whispered.

Mokuba's head rose hesitantly up as though it was on a string and, through the darkness, Kaiba saw those glazed green eyes widen at the sight of him. "Seto?" And to think, the last time they had seen each other it had been in Seto's office, before all this madness started. The boy staggered to his feet, clutching at the locket around his own neck – the one that contained Seto's photograph. "Seto! It's you."

Seto tried to twitch his mouth into a reassuring smile as relief washed over him. Here was his little brother. And he was about to get him out. "Yeah. It's me." He once promised Mokuba that he would always protect him, and so he would.

 _After all,_ a voice echoed bitterly in the back of his head. _You are so_ ** _good_** _at keeping promises._

Mokuba's face lit up with absolute happiness. "Aw, Seto. I always knew you would rescue me," he said, gripping at his locket. _"Always."_

A knot grew in Seto's throat. "Little brother…"

"So, what now? I bet you have some high-tech plan to get me out of– eh." Mokuba took a few steps forward and reached out his big brother. But again, he reached the limit of his bonds. They clattered loudly.

"Stay still, kiddo," Kaiba shot out, seeing Mokuba stagger.

"Okay. Whatever you say, big brother." There was only joy on the eleven-year-old's face. He was going to be alright. His big brother was here now.

"Just give me one second to open this door."

The keys rattled in the silence. "Seto, where were you?" Mokuba finally whispered.

Kaiba crouched down, trying every key to match the cell door. Why were his hands shaking so much? He swallowed, and rasped, "In a coma." It might as well have been true. It might as well have lasted six months as one week. "I was dead to the world Mokuba. The doctors themselves wouldn't have thought I could recover. Hell, the stock market certainly didn't." There was only one key left to try. Why was it always the last goddamn key.

Slow, loud clapping started up behind Kaiba.

He froze, and shut his eyes for a moment. He did not need to see the look of fear and horror on Mokuba's face to know who it was. He did not even need to turn around. Slowly, very slowly, the key now in the lock, Kaiba straightened up from his crouch, and turned to look into the face of Maximillion Pegasus.

There he was. The man himself, in his obnoxious red suit and ridiculous cravat. Now that he thought about it, Kaiba always had _despised_ men in red suits.

"Well, well. The brother's Kaiba. Reunited at last. Bravo, Kaiba. Bravo. I knew nothing would stop you from getting here," the man said smoothly, pocketing one hand and standing with all the poise in the world, as though he was meeting Kaiba at another gala. Not at the bottom of a castle in a dungeon.

Kaiba's eyes narrowed. "Pegasus."

He smiled jovially at the two boys in front of him. "Though, _really_ Kaiba-boy, if I'd _known_ you were coming, I'd have prepared a better welcome for you," he cooed. The cruelty that shone through his face made it all too clear just what kind of welcome Pegasus had in mind.

"You don't need to worry about me." Kaiba answered curtly. Though really, from where Seto stood, as the anger slowly cooked and boiled within him, he felt that, at this moment, he ought to be Pegasus's _greatest_ worry. Suddenly, all the manners in which he'd fantasized dealing with the creator of Duel Monsters during that long helicopter ride once again resurfaced in Kaiba's mind. _I am going to destroy you. Slowly. I am going to enjoy your screams._

Pegasus sighed, not looking too troubled. "Well, yes," he corrected himself. "Kaiba, I knew you'd come for Mokuba… _eventually,"_ he tacked on derisively.

Kaiba's fists tightened. His rage built. "Oh, you did?" He was shaking with the venom inside of him. "Well tell me something, Pegasus. Did you also foresee what I'm about to do to you for harming my little brother?"

The older man smirked, surveying the scene. Chillingly. Self certainly. "Actually, Kaiba, I predict you won't lay a finger on me."

"And why is _that?"_

The eye which Kaiba could see once more fixed on him. Suddenly, behind that shoulder length silver hair, and in the place where his other eye should have been, something flashed _gold._

The fire sputtered in its stone basins.

Kaiba lost what remained of his patience and clarity. "You conniving _snake._ I should take you down _right now_ for what you've done to Mokuba." Kaiba's teeth set. He was done. He could do it now. They were alone here now. The guards were still out cold. It was too perfect. Stupid idiot. He should never have come down here alone.

"…Don't be _ridiculous,_ Kaiba-boy."

It was with that line that Kaiba felt something stir inside of him. Something primal. Something very, very afraid. And all the while that smooth voice lulled on. "In my dungeon, in my castle, in my realm, the only one who makes threats…" Light flared from the place of Pegasus's second eye. A wind picked up. His long hair billowed around him. The light intensified. Kaiba shielded his eyes. "…is _me."_

Mokuba, however, was transfixed. He could not tear himself away from that light. And suddenly, he too was very afraid. More afraid that he had ever been in his life. In his mind, Kisara's words echoed. _"Well…It looks like I'll have to think of another way to get you out of here. This is the lowest dungeon in the castle, so this is pretty much as bad as it can get, in case I mess up again."_

His senseless body crumpled to the floor. His vacant eyes fixed onto wall of his cell.

Kaiba heard the thud behind him. "Mokuba?" He turned, and felt as though cold fingers had seized around his heart. "You monster," Kaiba whispered. "What have you done?" He looked back at Pegasus, just as the man's hair settled gracefully back around his shoulders. _"What have you done to him?!"_

"It's just a little magic trick."

" _Tell me. What have you done?"_

With a flick of his wrist Pegasus held up a card. It was a Duel Monsters card. And, on it, before Seto's very eyes, there appeared a picture of Mokuba, his hands raised against the frame, as though frozen in a desperate effort to escape. Kaiba did not understand. He could not understand. And yet, somehow, he felt that he understood all too well.

He felt as though he's seen this somewhere, long before. On a stone tablet.

"I've ensured your cooperation. For you see Mokuba's soul is now imprisoned in a place where the locks _can't_ be picked," Pegasus said, smiling almost benignly. "The name of this card is _The Soul's Prison."_

Kaiba blinked at him. "You're mad."

Pegasus sighed. "And there he will remain, Kaiba-boy, until you beat me in a duel."

"Duel? With you? Now? Fine. I'll do anything." Kaiba's fingers twitched. His palms were sweating. His eyes were fixed on the card with Mokuba's expression of terror.

Pegasus smirked. Oh, he had Kaiba exactly where he wanted him. Pegasus shook his head, his hair waving with every motion. "Not just yet, Kaiba." Carefully, he re-pocketed the card inside his coat. Out of sight. But not out of mind. "You must first earn the _privilege_ to challenge me. And you can only do that by defeating Yugi Mutou in a duel."

Kaiba's eyes widened.

Pegasus shrugged, brandishing his hands about, as though already envisioning the spectacle. "And if you can't win against him, Mokuba's soul will stay mine forever."

Pegasus smiled at the look on the boy's face. So resolved. And yet so innately broken. _Oh yes, Seto Kaiba. If you haven't realized it yet, everything you love, or have ever loved, is at my mercy. Everything._

Almost fondly, Pegasus thought to his dear, beloved daughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter I combined what happens in the anime with what happens in the manga. That is why the plot of this chapter does not seamlessly follow either. I used Kisara to bind the two storylines into one.
> 
> Illustration of Kisara & Mokuba, reaching for one another: [SetoKisa Week 1. Day 6. “Family.”](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/634277530238697472/waifine-september-25th-day-6-family)
> 
> Illustration of the Kisara & Seto hiding behind a suit of armor: [SetoKisa Week 1. Day 2. “I Need a Hero.”](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/634278156542574592/waifine-september-21st-day-2-i-need-a)


	9. The Wind of Change

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As the Blue-Eyes White Dagon is injured beyond the brink of pain, the souls bound to it by destiny must either weather the storm, or be scattered by its winds forever.

Book I | **The Wind of Change**

Duelist Kingdom Arc

Part V

_Seto Kaiba: 18 years old_

_Kisara Pegasus: 16 years old_

**…**

The field of their duel was set. On the roof of Pegasus’s Castle, Kaiba stood at the top of one tower, and Yugi on one adjacent to it. The battle itself would play out in the isle connecting the two. All was in place on this annex. Were it not for the dire nature of the circumstances Kaiba might almost have appreciated the staging of it all. He, who played chess so excellently, had become a pawn. He knew, somewhere, that twisted bastard Pegasus was watching.

And, for a flicker of a moment, he wondered if _she_ was safe, and if she was watching too. The cold wind blew through him and banished the thought from his mind.

**…**

From a window of one of the surrounding towers, keeping just out of sight, Kisara leaned against the thick stone wall, looking out at the battle spread before her. Her wound was throbbing from the climb, and yet was nothing to the havoc of her nerves. That same wind rustled past her, catching at her white hair and wafting it out of the slit-like window as she looked down on the scene below.

The duel began. 

Kisara’s eyes remained fixed on Kaiba. She watched the sheer calm with which he entered the first phase of his attack. Even from here she could see his own exhaustion. After she left the dungeons she had been unable to sleep in the night, not knowing whether or not Kaiba and his brother had escaped – not knowing whether all of her meddling had been of any help in the end, or if it only caused more harm. Well, her father was all too happy to answer that question when, cheerily over breakfast, he suggested that she go up to the annex to take a look around. “Might do you a world of good, Angel-face,” he had cooed. “Who knows,” he added, a piece of pancake sitting on the end of his fork, “you might even see something you _like.”_ With a vicious smile, he bit in.

Kisara shuddered, returning her attention to the playing-field. The Kaiba brothers had not escaped. And now, Seto Kaiba was once more stepping through the elaborate motions laid down by her father to get his little brother back.

…It _was_ interesting, watching Kaiba play. Kisara had always avoided seeing his duels on television, for the obvious reasons of her feelings on the matter of the man. Still, she would have expected him to be one to toy with his opponents. To duel as he lived. But now… even from the little that she knew of dueling and of Duel Monsters, she could see that Kaiba was trying to finish Yugi off as quickly as possible.

And yet… as Kisara’s attention began to encompass more than the duel itself, she began to realize that there was so much _else_ on this field before her eyes. So much which, mere weeks ago, she would not have recognized– like the instant, hardly even a flash, in which a boy of seventeen had transformed into the nameless Pharaoh of old. Around his neck flashed an inverted pyramid, with an eye at its center. _The Millennium Puzzle._

Kisara’s throat went dry as she saw before her a man from a memory she could not fully place. “Ugh.” She pressed her hand to her head, and gripped into her crutch more firmly. To have something so _close_ that she could almost recall it… it would drive her mad. _If it hasn’t already._ Her eyes narrowed on the man who was no longer ‘Yugi Mutou,’ who now combated Seto Kaiba. The man, who was not a boy, called forth the _Dark Magician_ card. Again, the hairs on the back of Kisara’s neck rose. Why did this scene, with this Monster and this man, seem so _familiar_ to her? Where had she seen it before?

Kaiba jeered across the playing field. “I’m surprised you’d put your Magician at risk, Yugi.”

The man who called himself Yugi simple smiled. In response, he in turn played _Eye of Truth,_ to better see just what Kaiba _did_ have in store for his Magician, he explained. And as the holograms of Kaiba’s cards spun about, the _Eye_ revealed something _truly_ striking. In his hand Seto Kaiba was holding a card of the _Blue-Eyes White Dragon,_ and it spun out to face directly against the tower that held Kisara Pegasus. For the first time in her life Kisara, daughter of the creator of Duel Monsters, found herself face to face with the card of the _Blue-Eyes White Dragon._ Her nails dug into the stone wall against which she braced herself _._

 _I don’t understand. If he has the Blue-Eyes, why hasn’t he played it yet?_ In her mind echoed Kaiba’s own jeer at Yugi… for putting his Dark Magician in danger. Looking at the design, even from this distance, she had to admire her father’s artistry. Pegasus had painted the scales blue, but in such a way that it looked more like shadow than pigment. Kisara raised a hand to her own hair, which took on many of the same tones when it caught the light, almost streaking blue at times. She absentmindedly played with a strand, still looking at the card. It was the eyes which Kisara was transfixed by. Not due to any beauty, but to the strange affinity of them. …As when one looked into the bathroom mirror. What was Kaiba planning for the Blue-Eyes? Kisara felt her heart skip a beat. _And will it hurt?_

“Kaiba sure loves his Blue-Eyes.” The phrase wafted up to where Kisara hid herself. One of Yugi’s friends had spoken. There was a whole cluster of them watching the duel. Kisara blinked down at the scene. And Kaiba did not merely possess the one. He had two more within his deck. All of the _Blue-Eyes_ cards currently in circulation belonged to this man.

Another boy, however, interrupted Kisara’s thoughts before she could dwell too long on the exact words that the first boy had used. _“Three_ Blue-Eyes White Dragons?” he said in awe. “That’s got to be nearly impossible to beat!” Kisara’s eyes flickered between duel and spectators. The first boy to speak had had blown, spiked hair. The second one’s hair was white and tattered, and he– _and he–_

Kisara’s heart constricted. She lurched away from the window. She clutched at her own mouth to keep from screaming. She could have sworn that as she moved out of sight, so too his head turned to look at where she’d been. Only to find the window empty.

 _No…_ she thought to herself, closing her eyes. _There is no way._ She could not see him well enough from where she stood. _It cannot be him._

After a few minutes where the only sound in that stone tower was her own rapid breathing, Kisara slowly turned back to look once more out of the window. The white-haired boy’s attention was again on the duel – if it had ever left to begin with. Kisara swallowed. _There is no way that all three of them are on that rooftop right now…_ However… if that _was_ who she suspected it to be… and if her memories of that time were not misleading… then Kisara was looking at a convergence of three of the most powerful men in all of Egypt’s history. And she suspected that not a single one of them had a clue.

Meanwhile, the duel went on.

“Behold!” Kaiba bellowed, lifting a card into the air, “the mighty _Blue-Eyes White Dragon!”_ Kisara’s eyes widened. _It was here._ With a roar which, to her, sounded all too much like her own voice, and a spray of electric sparks, it issued forth. “Now, Yugi, your fate belongs to me!” Kisara looked upon the beast for the first time in her life as wings, glimmering white scales, and mighty heaving muscles hauled themselves forth from the Duel Disk and onto the turrets of the Pegasus Castle. It stretched out its great leathery wings and opened its eyes to the world. They were the same arresting shade of blue as her own.

Seto Kaiba for the first time fully appreciated the dragon’s similarity to the girl into whose eyes he’d stared the night before. His breath almost caught. The moment passed. “Take flight!” he roared, relishing in the way the creature responded to his voice. “Blue-Eyes White Dragon, _rise!”_ The beast cried out and, with one almighty flap of its wings, it tore off, high above the castle. The tower in which Kisara stood shook. She craned her head up and out of the window.

 _She favors her right wing,_ Kisara thought absentmindedly, a smile pulling at the corner of her thin lips as she conjured an _Industrial Illusions_ jet in her mind. _The same as I do..._

“Go,” Kaiba continued, _“White Lightning Attack!”_ The blast outshone the sun, and when it crashed down onto the castle it enveloped the entire tower. Kisara gripped into the castle wall. It was all that she could do to keep from toppling. The smoke cleared to reveal man and beast set side by side. None of the looks of self-confidence that Kaiba had exuded up until this moment could compare to that which now set on his face. He looked like a man who could challenge the world and win, with the Blue-Eyes by his side.

Kisara stared in awe, not at Kaiba, but at the dragon. _This… is what I have,_ she thought, mind numb. _This… was my gift to him._ In that moment Kisara realized that, no matter what uncertain and unhappy cacophony of feelings she now had for the man who had caused her so much pain and so much good, it was nothing to what she must have felt for him once, in another life. She realized then… that she must have _adored and trusted_ him with absolute clarity to have bequeathed such a gift on such a man. But for the life of her, she could not remember–

_…Why?..._

With his next move Kaiba performed an act beyond imagination. He brought the dragons together. “Now I create a Duel Monster without peer. With attack force so great that no monster can stand against _him.”_ The pronoun clashed hard against Kisara’s ear, even as her attention remained riveted to the field. An explosion erupted from the Duel Disk. Kisara had to throw up an arm to shield her eyes. Then, when she looked again, blinking against the glare, she saw the silhouette of a colossus appearing from the smoke. Kaiba’s voice went before the monster. “I create the _Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon!”_

Kisara’s lips parted as she started at the mutation. The three-headed dragon let out a snarl as it towered over the man that Kisara knew to have been a once Pharaoh of Egypt. She swallowed. Was she… daunted? No. She was amazing. Enthralled, even. Because, as she seemed to be understanding so much from watching the manner of Kaiba’s dueling, Kisara now also understood one thing more: that just as she sometimes seemed to know the man better than he knew himself, he had the same knowledge of her. He knew how to make the Blue-Eyes more powerful than even Pegasus could have imagined. He knew how to turn her weakness into strength. Even as the realization washed over her Kisara felt the pain ease up from her joints. She felt new-found adrenaline pumping through her body. Tentatively, she attempted to shift her weight onto both her hips, and onto her legs, without the use of her cane. And for the first time in weeks… _it held._ In awe, Kisara looked back to the field. The fusion had made her stronger.

The man who called himself Yugi responded simply. _“Before this Duel’s over, your dragon will fall.”_

Thought she felt that she ought to have better faith in Kaiba, Kisara was scared. And within one turn, the man made good on his threat. Kisara watched the actions of the once great Pharaoh and they gripped around her heart like a cold hand of fear. Fear for Kaiba and his brother. Fear for the dragon. Fear for herself. After everything that these last weeks had brought her, _she was so afraid of pain._ One after the other ‘Yugi’ conjured forth _Mammoth Graveyard,_ _Polymerization_ and _The Living Arrow._ Kisara watched as Kaiba put into words both her fear and her query.

His voice shaking, he asked, “W-What’s a _Living Arrow_ card?”

 _“Living Arrow_ allows me to use my other cards in combination, not with my own cards, but with my opponent’s monsters. I’ll show you–” Kisara did not understand. How could she understand? She had no real knowledge of the game. And yet now, though she did not understand the technicalities, she felt like an animal staring down the barrel of a gun. Unable to run. And then the gun fired. “I can use the magical power of _The Living Arrow_ to bond my _Mammoth Graveyard_ to the _heart_ of your _beast.”_

The arrow shot across the field. There was no running now.

With the shadow of the _Mammoth_ engulfing it, the arrow struck at the core of the _Blue-Eyes_ and, with it, at the core of Kisara Pegasus. Without the support of her crutch, which she had leaned against the wall some minutes before, her knees hit the ground. The sudden smell of putrefying flesh rose into her mouth like bile. The heads of the dragon reared back in such an agonized cry that who could possibly have heard Kisara’s little scream over their three deafening shrieks?

**…**

Though nothing in the world should have made Kaiba look away from the horror playing out on the field before him, for some reason, his gaze snapped to an empty window in an adjacent tower. On the floor, out of sight, Kisara, with fingers trembling and mouth stretched open in pain, clawed at the brace around her stomach.

On the field the head of a mammoth cadaver through the belly of the _Blue-Eyes._

“No, my dragon! _What have you done?”_ Kaiba felt the strangest desire to drop everything, and to cross the field and beat Yugi with his own two fists. Forget the cards. This was not a card game. What Yugi had just done– _What had he just done?_

Meanwhile, the smug little shit across the field launched into exposition. “My _Mammoth Graveyard_ can’t properly fuse with your _Ultimate Dragon._ Instead it causes your monster _to rot and decay from the inside out.”_ The words struck against Kaiba’s ears like a physical blow. “Each turn your Ultimate Dragon will weaken until your creature is _no more.”_

His eyes flitting across the field. All that Kaiba could do was take in how quickly his plan was unraveling at his fingertips. “There must be something I can do to save my Ultimate Dragon,” he rasped, a bead of sweat trickling down the side of his face. Not again. Surely he could not be so helpless again. Surely he would not be made to watch for a second time in so many hours as something precious to him was snatched away – destroyed within his very reach.

Not again.

With every turn that passed the Blue-Eyes weakened. And with every turn, in the tower adjacent to that of the duel, Kisara could feel it as she lay prostrate across the rising stairs, unmoving, save for the twitch of her fingers. The stench of her own flesh filled her nostrils. The carcass on the field began to ooze and drip, violet gasses of decomposition pluming from it.

Kaiba’s eye twitched. _Can’t lose. The fate of Mokuba’s soul rides on this game._ And only god knew what else. At another time such wild thoughts might have been laughable. He was not laughing now. Again, despite the horror of the scene before him, his eyes darted up to that vacant window. Almost hysterically, Kaiba called out for the dragon to attack again. Wretched and wounded, it complied. To no avail. _No… I will not- cannot- be defeated._ Again he cried out for the dragon to attack. Again it proved completely useless. And still the Blue-Eyes continued to sicken. Now Kaiba was shaking in earnest. At the sight. At the smell. At the knowledge of his own uselessness in the protection of those whom he cared about most.

“Once again you have failed Kaiba.” Yugi said out loud what Kaiba felt to his core.

Kaiba stood tall, lips slightly parted, shoulder limp, hands now loose by his side, and eyes unseeing. Yet he felt like he was seeing far too much. Yugi, the idiots, the castle, all fell away, and all that was left was he and the poor, crippled beast before him. _I can’t believe it. I failed. I failed my brother. I failed Mokuba! His soul will be trapped… forever._ The lack of food and sleep finally took their toll on his addled senses and Seto Kaiba fell into hallucination. As the strange and horrifying thought reverberated through his mind, his eyes slowly slid from one wing, oozing and pussing, to another, rotting to the bone. What had he done to her, he wondered absentmindedly. _You were so magnificent._ He stared into her dulled, opaque eyes.

Those eyes turned downward. He followed their gaze, and in the place of the _Mammoth,_ found himself looking at his little brother, trapped in the husk of the beast. _“Seto!”_ It was a younger Mokuba. A child Mokuba. The Mokuba to whom Kaiba had given his oath of protection. And now, that small child was reaching out his hand to his big brother. “Help, Seto! Please, help me!” The dragon groaned, as though echoing the child’s cry. Kaiba remained fixated, staring, rooted to the spot. “Brother, please!” The ooze pooled over his little brother’s face, dripping like so many bars of the cage from which he could not free him– obscuring him. “You _promised!_ You promised to help me!” The dragon shuddered, its knees buckling beneath a weight it could no longer uphold, fixing Kaiba with a desperate, pleading stare.

_I promised to help you both._

Kaiba watched as, from where he stood, his own younger self, the boy who once met Kisara at that gate all those years ago, tore across the boundless expanse toward Mokuba. Towards the dragon.

“Seto, _hurry!”_ Mokuba cried. The dragon roared in pain.

“Big _broth-!!!”_ The last of the child’s fingers vanished inside the corpse of the beast. Like a knife, he reached the dragon’s heart. It too let out one final cry that seemed to echo Seto’s name, before it broke apart into pieces.

“Mokuba!” The child version of the man skidded to a halt, just as the dust rose from the bones of beast and boy. Without turning, his voice filled with self-loathing, he whispered, “You’re rotten to the core, Seto Kaiba, just like that dragon.” That dragon, which he had brought to this state of horrible destruction– she had been so strong, before he chose to once more meddled in her life. Kaiba blinked. … _How is it that I destroy everything that I touch?_ The man lifted a hand to look at it. He blanched at the sight as, sure enough, he too was decaying before his very eyes, the flesh peeling and dripping from the bone. _To the core. Rotten. Truly._ And he infected everything else that ever came near him. Everyone else. 

“It’s all your fault!” The boy whom he had once been whipped around to look at him, catching his thought midair. “Why, Seto?! Why didn’t you help him?!?” _Why did you not help them?_ After all… “You _promised_ you’d always be there for him. You promised him, Seto Kaiba!” Even as the words struck his ears, Kaiba felt his own flesh blistering away. _“You promised!”_

He did once, didn’t he? Promise. He promised to take care of Mokuba, and to keep him safe. He promised to protect Kisara, and here she was, a specter of this castle, as much as any ghost. And now… when he had tried to restore her to strength... Now, once again, he instead flung her to the dogs. A carcass. Mokuba, lost. Kisara, the Blue-Eyes, lost. Her name stuck in his throat. His brother’s, however, did not. He felt himself falling backward, back into the world of the living, his lips parting in a final cry of, _“Mokuba.”_

Seto Kaiba’s vision cleared, and he was once more standing on the turrets of Pegasus’s castle. The wind swept past him, through his thin coat and, covered in a sheen of cold sweat as he was, it chilled him to the marrow. For a few moments he stared vacantly, not knowing what or where he was. Then his mind snapped into place, and he knew what he had to do. His eyes narrowed. He had no other option now. One of the dragon’s heads whimpered out weakly– a final plea for his help. He would not fail. Neither her, nor his brother. He _would_ keep his promises.

Kaiba took a deep, steadying breath, and watched with cleared and hardened eyes as Yugi summoned the _Celtic Guardian,_ and it attacked his dragon head on. Kaiba jaw clenched as, to the sound of a helpless yelp, the Guardian’s sword cleaved through the throat of one of the dragon’s three necks, and a head fell to the ground with a sickening squelch. It did not disappear, but lay there between the duelists. _Enjoy your victory, short as it is. Because as I live and breathe, you will not touch the Blue-Eyes again._ Sure enough, strong as the Blue-Eyes was, the blow was not enough to bring it down. However, one more blow and he would lose the match. But it would never come to that. He had promised. 

Kaiba closed his eyes, preparing himself. Then he looked across the field to his opponent. “Yugi… it can’t end this way. If I don’t defeat you in this duel, Pegasus will keep Mokuba prisoner. Forever.” He knew that what he was saying made no scientific scene. But he also knew that he believed it with all of his being, and it terrified him. For some reason he wanted Yugi to understand. Yugi was an honorable man. He deserved this explanation. …Also, Kaiba could not stand to see the dragon fall. Somehow, he knew, in his heart of hearts, that if the dragon were to fall, it would be one injury too many. The Blue-Eyes was stronger than the best of them, but even it could not survive _this._ “I can’t let that happen,” Kaiba continued, interrupting his own thoughts. “And even though I don’t have a card that can keep you from attacking, I think I still have a strategy that will stop you in your tracks.” The wind, which had before been so cold, now blew fiercely past him once again, and he was grateful for it. It cut through him and awoke his torpid legs. It was the wind of change. This was his one chance at victory. Kaiba stood a little straighter. “I’m going to force your hand, and win this battle, Yugi.” He took a step backwards. These were the moments that defined Seto Kaiba. Another step back. Joey Wheeler made some joke about him _retreating._ These were the moments that had made Seto the CEO of Kaiba Corp. Wheeler stopped joking. Another step back. Kaiba’s tactician’s mind. Another step. His ruthlessness.

Yugi was an honorable man. Seto Kaiba never had been. He was standing at the ledge of the castle tower. Kaiba, without looking, raised his leg, and stepped backwards onto the risen barricade. With this one action he had drawn the complete, wide eyed and horror-struck attention of everyone on the annex roof. The cold wind whipped up around him and, carefully, Kaiba rolled onto the balls of his feet to keep from losing his balance. “The real game starts now. _Your move,_ Yugi.” He stared his opponent down. “You can attack my Blue-Eyes again and wipe out my remaining lifepoints. But if you do, the resulting shockwaves might cause me _to lose my balance.”_ There. He spelled it out for all of them. He stared, unblinking.

“Don’t tempt me,” Yugi snarled with all of the helpless ferocity that Kaiba had himself felt mere moments before.

A small, sardonic smirk hooked at the corner of Kaiba’s mouth for the first time in hours. His gaze did not waver. He’d made his choice. Now it was time for Yugi to do the same. “My fate is completely in your hands, Yugi,” he said. “You’ll decide this duel one way or another. Of course, if you don’t surrender, I might be… _‘hurt.’_ You wouldn’t want that, would you?” Another gust of wind blew through the parapets. Kaiba teetered, and then slowly crossed his arms. “We’re not playing with lifepoints anymore, Yugi. We are playing with _life.”_ His life. His brother’s life. The Blue-Eye’s life.

“I’m warning you, Kaiba, don’t push me too far,” Yugi blurted on, repeating himself, losing control. “I must win this duel to rescue my grandfather!”

Kaiba remained unfazed. “And I must win this duel to rescue Mokuba. The difference is I’m willing to risk anything to do it.” The decapitated head of the Ultimate Dragon still lay between them. Its stench was such that even the wind could not carry it off. “You know I can stand up here all day, Yugi. And I’m certain you won’t make any attack for fear that you might knock me off, even though you know, by not attacking, you give up the only chance you have to save your grandpa.” As he spoke, riling his opponent with every syllable, he felt a safety on this ledge that he had not felt since clapping eyes on the _Living Arrow._ Was he really certain that Yugi would not attack? No. Not in the least. But that did not matter anymore.

Yugi winced as Kaiba’s words struck.

Kaiba continued. “…Which means I have the advantage over you, for in my case there’s nothing holding me back.” And with that, he drew a new card. And his faith was rewarded. “Ah.” An actual breath of something akin to relief pushed through him. He showed the card to his opponent. _“Reborn the Monster,_ which I’ll use to resurrect the Blue-Eye’s head that was just destroyed by your Guardian.”

 _“What?”_ Fear tremored in Yugi’s voice. “Restore a head of the Blue-Eyes?” Kaiba could have smiled. _And you thought that you could cripple such a dragon._ He slammed the card down on the Duel Disk and, with a roar of relief, a fresh head tore through the stump where the old one had been felled. And there it was, scales shining and eyes bright. Alive.

Kisara coughed in her tower, and blearily blinked awake. Her joints aching, she slowly forced herself up onto her elbow. Her hair fell lopsided over her face. _Well, we are certainly going to have to stop making a habit of this,_ was all that she could conjure in her muddled brain as she shakily whipped away the spittle that had streamed out of the corner of her mouth.

Swallowing through the lingering taste of rot, she latched her hand onto the window ledge, and hauled herself into view of the battlefield once more. _Alright then. And here I thought that I was frightening enough to look at to begin with,_ she mused, surveying the moldering remains of the dragon. Her gaze trailed onward, and fell upon Kaiba, standing on the ledge of the turret.

Her eyes went wide. _Oh gods, no._

“Our lifepoints are equal, Yugi. Strike now, if you dare. Otherwise, next turn _, I swear I’ll take you down.”_ Kaiba spat across the rooftop. His dragon was once more by his side. There was nothing he could not do.

 _You idiot._ Kisara stared, horror struck once again. With a groan and a hiss, she reached up for an outcropping rock and pulled herself back to a standing position. All of the health and strength that had come to her with the fusion of the Ultimate Dragon now vanished and left behind it nothing but the smell of death. _Death. Is that what you are looking for? Seto, there are only so many ways I can protect you, and you have already run through most._

“Surrender, Yugi!” Kaiba’s voice cut through the air. Evening was nearing. The cold was beginning to seep into the skin. “That is unless you have the courage to unleash your attack!” With those words Kaiba drew a thumb across his neck, and Kisara mutely put a hand to her own throat, her eyes darting to the reborn head of the Blue-Eyes, so recently sliced. _Kaiba is daring the Pharaoh to use his cards to cut Kaiba’s throat._

Yugi –no, not Yugi –the nameless king of Egypt, thundered back. “Kaiba, I’ve never backed away! And I’m not starting now!” Kisara’s mouth opened in dread. If it were the boy in control, then she knew that no harm would come to Seto. She knew that the boy could never go through with such an attack. The man, however, the sovereign– that was an entirely different story. And she could see as even Kaiba’s face turned guarded. “Celtic Guardian,” the Pharaoh bellowed with all of the might of the ruler that he did not remember that he was, _“Attack!”_ Kaiba’s jaw clenched. Helpless and knowing all too well that the next moment might well see the end of both Kaiba and herself, Kisara lurched forward, through the window.

A brunet girl, the only girl in the group, separated herself from Yugi’s friends and tore across the battlements to him, crying out for him to halt the attack. Her words reached him, as a look of horror plumed across Yugi’s face – the child’s face. “STOP!” He howled, his arms outstretched, his knees hitting the ground. The Celtic Guardian _halted._ Kisara’s hands only just caught her against the frame of the window. The wind whipping her white hair around in a billowing mass as she watched, transfixed.

Kaiba closed his eyes, almost in respect for the soon fallen adversary. “Couldn’t do it, huh?” he whispered. Kisara read his lips across the distance. He opened his eyes and, instead of calling out the Neutron Blast of the Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, he yelled out the far more familiar, “White Lightning Attack!” With a roar and a searing light, the Guardian was blasted away. The match was over. Seto Kaiba had won.

In the hollow aftermath, Kisara numbly pulled herself back from the brink and into the safety of the tower. She looked down on the crumpled form of Yugi Mutou. Even from here she could see his shoulders trembling violently as he stared down at his hands, and at what he had almost made them do. His brunette friend stood over him, her own face contorted in remorse, empathy and guilt. 

With a click of his heels, Kaiba hopped off the brink and, though Kisara knew that the manner of his victory was underhanded, she almost felt relief for him. Almost, were it not for the fact that this victory brought him to the doorstep of an adversary infinitely more dangerous than that he’d just faced.

**…**

The girl, Tea Gardner, had sunk to her knees by Yugi’s side, consoling him with words of how his grandfather would never have wanted to be saved at the cost of another life. Ridiculous. Mokuba would never have wanted Kaiba to hurt anyone either, but that was not the point. It was not as though the one being saved had the option to choose the method of their rescue. If they were at liberty to be so particular, they would not need saving in the first place. That was why it was up to the discretion of the rescuers to figure out the details. Or not, and leave their loved ones rotting in Pegasus’s care, as Yugi had elected to do.

“Then I guess he got what he wanted,” Kaiba cut in through the coddling. He wanted Yugi to know his own mistake. Kaiba thought better of him than to allow this sort of weakness to slide. He would have him understand that his, Kaiba’s, love for his little brother had been greater than Yugi’s for his grandfather, and if Yugi wanted to prove differently, he would have to be willing to go farther. Kaiba had demanded to play Yugi now, for the _right_ reasons. And he had. He just had not played in such a way that Yugi’s friends approved of. But then, fighting for something as important as the right reasons meant fighting dirtier than ever sometimes. Because there was no limit to how far Seto Kaiba would go for someone he cared about, bastard though he knew he was. That much he could claim upon himself. Playing dirty in a card game did not even scratch the surface of the things he would be willing to do if put to it. “Each player had to decide how he would react if he were the enemy. In order to win, he had to put himself in his enemy's place. And if I had been Yugi,” Kaiba’s expression was of stone, _“I would have pushed my enemy over the edge, to fall to the bottom of the castle, without hesitation._ All games, including cards, chess and war mean conflict between enemies. People are given a single chip called _life_ to use in these games.” And if the risk wasn’t worth it, then neither was the life.

“People’s struggles aren’t a game!” Tea snapped. “And you are the real loser here, betting your chip as if it meant nothing and not having the courage to live with a loss.” Nothing? Loss? Kaiba’s lips parted with the sheer unbelievability of what he was hearing. Loss of a game? Did she really think that he would rather live with the loss of a game, then not have risked his life, and lived with the loss of Mokuba? _Did she even hear her own idiocy?_

“Yugi may have lost one lousy Duel Monsters game, but at least he hasn’t lost his _heart_. Not like _you,_ Seto Kaiba. You’ve spent so much time with your machines you’ve forgotten what being human is about!”

His eye twitched. Her words pricked him.

She wasn’t finished either. The girl must have quite some lungs. Bringing her hand to her chest, she continued. “Yugi has a heart, Kaiba. Yugi has us– friends that will stand with him to the end, no matter whether he wins or loses some lousy game.” It was an unpleasant reminder of how the five members of his board turned on him the instant he had lost that first, fateful duel with Yugi. “…And what do you have Seto Kaiba? What do you have at the end of the day?!?” Staring down that rooftop at Yugi surrounded by his moronic friends, Kaiba felt uncomfortably vulnerable. “Tell me!” Tea Gardner pressed him. _“TELL_ _ME!!”_

His entire form felt rigid, and he could not pinpoint exactly why her words affected him as they did, as she and all the other trash surround that _child_ to comfort him. Kaiba’s eyes flickered to window, still vacant, which he had been drawn to the entire duel, for some reason or another. The starchips rose before his eyes, refocusing his gaze. “I have all I need!” He finally snarled back across the field, and clasped them out of midair.

It was true. He held the chips to save his brother in his hand. And he had protected his dragon against the inexplicably frightening possibility of being destroyed before his eyes. He would get Mokuba back. And, perhaps, when all of this was over, he would thank Kisara for what she had risked for him. He knew better than anyone that to defy Pegasus was to risk everything. And he felt concern for her. In truth, he felt concern for them all.

Kaiba walked to the center of the field, and turned to leave this rooftop. The sun was now setting rapidly, its last rays splashing across the island of Duelist Kingdom. Joey Wheeler tossed him back his other Duel Disk, spitting out, “Just don’t forget, it was _Yugi_ who saved _you!”_ Kaiba caught it deftly, and continued on his way to the castle, to Pegasus, and to his little brother. He did not spare Yugi a second glance. He was not proud of having prevented his opponent from saving his own loved one from Maximillion Pegasus. Kaiba would have preferred, truly, if there had been some other way for him to achieve his ends. And he did not often waste time on such preferences. The wind, which had won him the duel, billowed beneath his coattails. The day was coming to a close.

**…**

_“Long time, no see.”_

Kisara froze at the voice behind her, and stopped in her tracks. Slowly, she leaned against her cane. Descending from the tower was, impossibly enough, harder than the climbing. Darkness had completely fallen outside the castle by the time that she found herself back on level ground, cane in hand. And there would be no time for rest, much as the idea of her own bed allured Kisara to no end. No. She knew that sooner or later Kaiba would face off against her father. And, if she knew either man at all, and she had her suspicions that she knew both better than most, it would be sooner.

“Long time,” she concluded, half turning to face the tall man with tattered white hair whom she had seen from the tower. Oh, but he _did_ look different now. This was not the face he wore around his friends. This was not the kind, supportive, _concerned_ face she had glimpsed during that annex duel. “How did you get in here?”

Her eyes trailed down to the large ring which he wore around his neck. Another accessory which he had added since she’d last seen him, along with his now seemingly permanent leer. It was sizable golden circle, which contained in it a triangle with that same eye, and from which hung five sharp arrowheads. Of course, where would _he_ be without his _Millennium Ring._

This time the previous evening Kisara had been tearing through the dungeon halls, held up in support by Seto Kaiba. Now, the world seemed deathly still.

How could she have ever forgotten those flint-like brown eyes. He spoke again, hands in pockets, casually taking one step towards her at a time. “When one is friends with… shall we call him _Yugi Mutou…_ all sorts of doors open up.” His smirk stretched. “Come, come, my dearest.” Another step. “It has been such an age. Surly we can think of better things to talk about than the ‘how’ and the ‘why.’” Not in this lifetime had a man looked at her with such open want. And yet, it was not unfamiliar, coming from those eyes. Kisara shifted uncomfortably. In all her travels with her father, in all of the galas and evenings she had attended, she had been looked at with curiosity, mild alarm, or milder interest. Not want. It filled her with a plethora of feelings, and Kisara was not able separate the bad from the good.

When it came to Bakura, she had never been wholly able to separate the bad from the good.

He stopped short. “You haven’t changed,” he finally whispered, his eyes appreciating every broken crevice of her battered, sickly body. And it _was_ appreciation in his eye. Somehow. It felt more pleasant than Kisara could say to be appreciated at a time when she never felt more cracked. And it felt less pleasant than she could possibly articulate to feel as though a cold finger was slowly tracing up her spine.

Instead, with one or two more ‘clanks’ of the cane she herself turned around completely to face him, and with more bravery that she would have felt around almost any other man, looked him up and down as well. “You’re scrawnier,” she answered finally with a sort of casual familiarity.

He snorted. It was almost a laugh. “And paler,” she added for good measure.

He raised a white eyebrow. “Oh, and you’re really one to talk about pallor?”

She shrugged. “It’s not as noticeable in this part of the world as it was in that,” she said, almost nonchalantly, looking away.

“Noticeable enough.” Kisara turned her head back to find that he was standing a hair’s breadth from her. She could just make out the budding white stubble on his chin. Slowly, she looked up into those eyes that she had thought to never see again. It was strange. With Seto, all it took was one glance and she knew exactly what he was thinking. But with Bakura… had his gaze become softer? Two eyes. Kisara almost smiled. She was not used to their being _two._

“I did not think to find you here,” he finally said, searching her face for something, though she could not think of what it was. Perhaps she had known in the past, when she had been older. Now, however, at sixteen, she could not think of what it was. Once, in an age she did not remember, there had been some long forgotten pledge between them.

“No? I did not think to find you here either,” she responded, her voice giving off the slightest tremor.

A gong sounded. In unison they turned their heads towards the noise. They had once worked well in unison, if Kisara remembered correctly. If she remembered at all. Another gong. A duel was about to begin. She looked back up into Bakura’s eyes, and stilled. There was something predatory in his eyes and again, she did not know whether she liked it or did not, but she knew that she wanted to remain _still._

A third gong. The moment was up.

Bakura took a step away from Kisara, the distance between them remaining unbroken. “Better hurry,” he rasped. “I somehow doubt this is a duel either you or I will want to miss.” With that, he turned on his heel, and was gone. Like a thief from her past into the darkening night.

The evening wind drifted past her from an open window. Kisara shivered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustration of Kisara, flanked by Seto and Bakura: [SetoKisa Week 1. Day 5. “Jealousy.”](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/634423491076194304/waifine-september-24th-day-5-jealousy-not)


	10. To Disgrace the Name

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lady of the White Dragon awakes, and at last Priest Seto is faced with the reunion that he has both longed for and dreaded for... how long? ...Days? ...Years? ...Longer still?

Book I | **To Disgrace the Name**

Memory Arc

Part III

_High Priest Seto: 20 years old_

_The Lady of the White Dragon: 18 years old_

**…**

The wind blew in through the curtains of his balcony, bringing Seto once more out of the stupor into which he’d lulled. It was the hour before morning. He blinked and looked down at the papyrus document over which his reed quill now dangled a forgotten and precarious drop. With great care he guided the quill back to the ink jar and settled it to rest. For now.

This conflict between the Palace and the ‘Thief King’ Bakura had built to a pitch– the Pharaoh now missing, the throne without a king, and the kingdom in disarray. …So why was it that Seto’s mind was plagued, more than anything else, by his last encounter with Akhenaden? The young Guardian leaned on his elbow and pinched the rim of his nose, thinking back…

 _“Lord Akhenaden.”_ Seto’s greeting reverberated off the walls of the Shrine of Wedju where they had met many times before. Still, he looked about him as he entered, and the sight never ceased to amaze. It was a great Temple, with many kas sealed away in stone tablets lining the walls as high as the eye could see, all brought under the will of the Pharaoh by the hand of justice with the aid of the Millennium Items. These included, of course, the three Hidden Gods, whom only their current Pharaoh could summon. And there, at the altar, at the top of a great length of stairs, was Seto’s mentor and master, the Priest Akhenaden, wielder of the Millennium Eye.

From the foot of the steps Seto saw the older man’s head turn, and he nodded. A sign that his sacrifices to the gods were complete and that Seto might draw near. The younger man’s every step echoed into the vast granite space. Seto felt the pull at his muscles after an entire day of riding in the cramped littler. Once at the altar he bowed to the gods and, more importantly, to his mentor.

He told Akhenaden of the ‘patrol’ he and Shada had gone on and of the monsters that they’d found within people’s souls. But the older Priest did not react with the pride that Seto had anticipated. Rather, he responded only with a panicked rebuke. No. Not panicked. Nothing so fleeting. Akhenaden seemed… _afraid._

Seto felt slight disgust rise in his throat at the man to whom he had come with his pledge of loyalty and his plan for power. Surly not Akhenaden too? Surely not, at a time when such madness roamed their land, did _he_ intend to make a council of his conscience. Seto’s upper lips twitched. “Fear…” he spat the word like the useless syllable that it was. “Faced with the threat of the fall of the Dynasty, an _ordinary_ person might be _afraid. You,_ however, should be _proud_ of the work I have done.”

The older man blanched at the remark, a helplessness seeming to spread across his wizened face. “Well I am not!” he retorted. “Now, release these innocent people immediately!” he half begged, half ordered. “You _must_ do as I say!” Seto’s face remained unmoved, and Akhenaden knew it. The older man straightened up, his own face now riddled with disappointment. “You are a Guardian, Seto, and you must act like one. Free those people,” the old man’s one eye narrowed. “…for you have _disgraced_ the name of the Pharaoh.”

That his mentor had hurled on Seto the deepest insult that the young man could have endured, Seto did not show. He did not so much as twitch. Akhenaden had taught him all he knew since coming to the palace, all those years ago, off the streets as an orphan. To be thrown such a blow, and from the man from whom Seto most sought approval- he did not know how to react.

“But what about this?” Seto blurted out, after a moment of silence between them. “What if I found a person with a ka to rival the _gods?”_ The words were out of his mouth before he could even register what he was uttering. And, once out, they could not be brought back. All that he could do was watch to see what reaction they would invoke upon his master’s face. It was not as though he had intended to hide the presence of the girl from Akhenaden. And yet… he had not resolved on telling him either. Until now.

The shock that washed across the older Priest’s face at such a claim was instant and absolute. There would be no stopping now. “What?” he rasped, the question reverberating off of each stone tablet that surrounded them. “A ka to rival the _gods?”_

Once more the image of the girl prostrate in the street loomed before Seto’s eyes. That pale skin, that bloodstained hair. That whispered _‘…Thank you…so much…_ ’ However, he had spoken out, and he could not stop now. His master’s one keen eye demanded that he press on. “Right now,” Seto continued, focusing on the ka rather than on its keeper, “it is like a _baby_ whose heart had just begun to flutter. But eventually that heartbeat will become a _mighty pulse_ that will _shake the heavens.”_ Despite himself he could not contain the excitement he felt at such a power, though he knew that, to speak so, most of all as a Priest, was high blasphemy. 

Akhenaden’s eye flicked with curiosity, even over his reserve, pressing Seto on.

“The one who holds that ka is a woman…” Here Seto found himself faltering. What was he to tell his master? What could he say about her? What did he know about her himself? “She’s very weak, so I’m letting her rest.” He concluded. For an instant he thought he saw curiosity flicker through his mentor’s eyes at such an uncharacteristic act of compassion. Then again, it might have been Seto’s own paranoia. “As soon as she regains her strength, I plan to find a way to _draw_ the greatest amount of power from that ka,” he added almost immediately. His mind wandered to the cages in the dungeons, with all the prisoners piled on mass, where Seto had refused to have her placed. His eyes met that of Akhenaden, and suddenly he felt compelled by the interest which he saw there to carry on. “I’ll use the prisoners from the city to research the best way to do that,” he added, filled with bravado and malice. Malice towards Bakura. Malice towards Shada and Akhenaden. Malice towards all those who went only so far as their conscience permitted, and no further. False friends. Malice, most of all, towards the Lady of the White Dragon, who had made him doubt the limits of his own conscience by reminding him that he had once had one. “I’ll _torture_ them in any way I have to,” he snarled in conclusion at the older man, and turned upon his heels to leave.

He did not disgrace the name of the Pharaoh. He fought with every fiber of his being for its endurance. His master should not have thrown that insult so lightly. With one final glance at Akhenaden before descending the stairs, Seto spat, “I’ll come back when I can show it to you…” A sneer fixed on his face. “…When I can show you the _White Dragon.”_

That was his last memory of the man who had raised him as a father. That look of pain, hurt, and horror, before Seto had turned away from him and swept out of the Shrine. Since then Akhenaden had been attacked by Bakura and fallen into an unconsciousness from which he had yet to awaken. In the resulting hunt for the fiend-assailant, their Pharaoh had been lost to them. All was in chaos. …Since that last encounter with his mentor he, Seto, had learned- had remembered- just who the Lady of the White Dragon had been to him, in his past, before he had ever thought of Palaces and Pharaohs.

The sky was greying. Dawn would be upon them soon. Seto squinted at the horizon. He really ought to get some sleep. And then… perhaps he would visit her again. Perhaps…

“My lord,” a slave had appeared in his doorway.

Seto turned a fraction to acknowledge that he was listening, his eyes still fixed upon the horizon.

“Lord Akhenaden has awakened.”

Seto’s head snapped around to look at the slave. After a moment, he nodded, the slave bowed, and left the High Priest’s chambers. Slowly, Seto’s gaze slid back onto the cracking dawn, and a small smile graced his face. It was the first good news in days. Perhaps now, with his mentor once more among them, they would at last find the Pharaoh, and Seto would at last come to terms with the strange girl whose fate had fallen into his hands.

**…**

Teana, wife of the Pharaoh, rushed into the Royal Throne Room. She had hardly slept for nights, the hollow space in her bed too profound to allow any proper rest. Now, roused from her chambers by the thought of news, she swept in upon her inner court. “Shimon,” she called out to her husband’s vizier, who had just come into sight around the bend. The small man turned and, above the veil which concealed most of his face, his two violet eyes creased in a sympathetic smile. She reflected his smile in turn, and reached out her hands to take his. “I was blessed with the good tidings this morning that Priest Akhenaden is once more with us.” Looking about the room she saw the Priest himself, his bandages removed, and made an acknowledging nod to him, which he answered with a deeper bow. Queen Teana returned her attention to Shimon. “I had heard that one of the scouts returned, and wondered if there was any news of my husband–”

 _“You still have not found the Pharaoh?!”_ Seto snarled, expressing, he believed, the frustration that all of the currently assembled High Priests felt, though they did not voice it quite as vocally as he did. The soldier at his feet trembled. Shimon, in turn, closed his eyes, seeing to pray for patience on all accounts and with all parties concerned.

“Lord Seto,” the man on his knees whimpered, “the search party has not come back yet–”

“That’s enough!” Seto cut him off. “Find him, _even if you have to drain the Nile to do it!!”_

“Yes sir!” With many bows from his already crouched position, the unfortunate bearer of bad news half crawled and half scampered from the room.

Seto turned and, for the first time, caught sight of Teana. He made a bow with an accompanying murmur of, “My Queen,” and prepared himself for a chastisement. The Pharaoh’s wife was a woman who believed in negotiation over force. She believed in alliances and friendships over conquests. With deep shoulder-length brown hair, warm blue eyes, and a very strong will of her own, she and the High Priest Seto clashed often.

Now, however, she merely nodded at his deference, and responded quietly with a thanks. “We are grateful,” she said, “for your unwavering loyalty in this time of terrible crisis, when Our husband is not with us.” She surveyed all present in the room, her grip tightening on Shimon’s hands. “All of you. Many thanks.”

Akhenaden shifted. Doubtless his wound still agitated him.

Karim, a stocky man with black hair, and High Priest and Guardian over the Millennium Scales, asked quietly, almost desperately, his eyes fixed on the gates through which the most resent empty-handed soldier had fled, “Could it be… that the Pharaoh has fallen to Bakura?”

If Seto had not already wanted to round on the man for uttering such an absurdity in and of itself, he certainly felt no compunction about doing so after Karim had so _idiotically_ voiced his insecurities before their Queen. However, before he could so much as turn on his heels to face the fool, Shimon responded calmly and rationally. The man had, after all, been a High Priest of the Millennium Key in his own right, before passing it on to a younger Priest. “Shada is still out with the searchers,” he said. “If _not only_ the Millennium Ring, but _other_ Millennium Items have fallen into Bakura’s hands…” He did not name them. He did not put names to the Pharaoh’s Puzzle and Shada’s Key. “…Only four are left in the Palace,” he concluded.

Queen Teana’s shoulders sank. It was all the flint on the fire that Seto needed. His temper flared. “The Pharaoh must be alive! His Majesty still walks this earth!” he snarled at all those around him with their sorry dejected faces, as though they had already laid their King to rest in his tomb. “And his dream to protect his country is still _strong!_ We must not lose faith that the Pharaoh will return! If we expect Egypt to survive, _our King must resume the throne!”_ He was not one to give outbursts of faith and dreams, but he did believe. Above all other things, Priest Seto believed in his Pharaoh.

Teana gave Seto a weak smile. Tactfully, Shimon turned to Isis. “What do you see, with your Millennium Necklace, which can glance into the future?”

Isis, a striking woman and only Priestess among the Guardians, on whom the shadow of Mahad’s westing still lingered in the hard lines of her face that had never been there before, raised her hands to her Necklace expertly, and closed her eyes in concentration. Her forehead creased. Her fingers became ridged. “I see a _ripple_ move across a sea of shadows… As it spreads one among us will vanish…” Her voice wavered. Perhaps it was her choice as a seer to say _‘will’_ rather than _‘already had.’_ She continued. “I see the reflection of the shadows…” she whispered. “If only one, it will soon fade… But… if two… three… ripples overlap they will become a _great swell_ that will _drown_ us in _tragedy._ Time is _running out.”_ She swallowed, her fingers giving off the slightest tremor.

As much as Seto tended to sneer at the vague nature of prophesies, and found the Necklace to be the least reliable of the Millennium Items, this one forewarning left a chill in the room which had up till now been well warmed by the noonday Egyptian sun.

“Does this foretell the fate of our Kingdom?” Shimon whispered.

“Old friend,” Isis looked to him. “I fear this foretells the fate of our _world.”_

“The divine order of _Ma’at_ upheld by the seven Millennium Items has already begun to unravel,” Akhenaden cut in.

“And I thought it would last forever,” Shimon sighed, pinching the rim of his nose.

Akhenaden barked. “And by the hand of one _thief–”_

Isis’s eyes snapped open and stretched wide, her fingers once more around her necklace. _“I- I know what will prevent the tragedy!”_ she cried, her calm voice raising to a pitch. She stumbled. Karim caught hold of her, holding her upright. “We need a _vessel,”_ she whispered on, staring wide-eyed into the ceiling of Throne Room. “A _vessel_ to hold that swell…” _A vessel?_ They all looked to one another. Seto’s eyes narrowed. None of them could know for certain what that meant. Seto’s mind shifted to the only vessel that _he_ knew of. He, Shada, and Akhenaden. Seto was careful to avoid eye contact either of them as he fixed his gaze on the ground. Surly Isis did not mean–

One of Seto’s personal guards quietly stepped up behind him. No one seemed to notice. Not the High Priests, and not the Queen. “Lord Seto, I have a report.” Seto nodded for him to continue. His fellow High Priests remained deep in debate on the nature of the _vessel._ “The woman with the White Dragon is awake.” The words reverberated in Seto’s head. Seto’s jaw clenched. What was he to do now. …He had not visited the Lady of the White Dragon since that one fitful time. Four days ago. And since then so much had happened. The attack on his mentor. The disappearance of the Pharaoh. It had been so easy to just leave her in her cell, confident that she was not yet awake and that she was getting the rest that she needed so desperately. Confident that, so long as he did not approach her, he could not further betray the life that she had gifted him so long ago. 

Numbly, he nodded. “I will be along shortly,” he found himself whispering back to the guard.

**…**

With a groan the girl felt all of the sores and pains flood back into her body, as though they had been lying in wait for the moment she would feel them most acutely. She blinked blearily up at the ceiling, the grated window swimming in and out of focus. She narrowed her eyes, attempting to comprehend it. _Bars. There are bars on these windows_. Her eyes flew wide open. A jolt of panic when through her and, with it, a jolt of pain. She hissed, her back arching. She writhed from the surprise aches coursing through her body.

Waking up had been a sorry business, as it usually was. Gritting her teeth and digging her fingers into the woodwork of her cot, the girl heaved herself up into a sitting position, to find herself confronted by a large guard with a plate of bread and a cup of wine. “Up at last?” he said. “You’ve been groaning half the morning. Here,” he put the food down by the girl’s side. She hardly moved her head. She hardly thought she could. “Eat. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

Her vision swam.

Another clang. He was gone, and the grated door shut behind him. She blinked, trying how she could to pull her thoughts together. He hadn’t looked like a slaver. He hadn’t looked like a magistrate either. She squinted, trying to remember the last thing that had happened to her before she had lost consciousness. She had been attacked by the villagers. Not the first time. No more new to her than these sorts of hellish mornings.

 _I was attacked by the villagers… and then…_ And then the attack had stopped. The girl remembered a voice- a very familiar voice- calling off the attack. But whom would the villagers possibly have listened to?

She leaned back against the stone wall against which her cot was wedged. Everything hurt. Nothing made sense. She almost smiled, casting a halfhearted glance at the bread and the wine. _Everything hurts and nothing makes sense. What else is new?_

Time and her consciousness blurred in and out of focus. She didn’t try to control it. When her consciousness left her, so did the pain. The cell door clanged open once again. The girl’s eyes cracked ajar. She squinted. It was that same guard.

“Are you done eating?” In truth she had no stomach for food. The guard opened the door further. “Get up,” he ordered.

She shifted, her knobby knees knocking together. She did not oblige him. Instead the girl looked up into his face with the only emotion that she could muster. Apathy. “Where… am I?” she finally rasped out, her voice scraping against her throat on its way out of her mouth.

“The Hospital Wing of the Palace,” he responded crisply. The girl raised a white eyebrow, her eyes trailing around the cell. Right. A hospital with bars on the doors and windows. Naturally. What had she been thinking.

The guard continued, “You were so weak when they found you, you slept for four days. They weren’t sure you would wake up.” He himself was surveying her as though she was some sort of bizarre anomaly. A normal enough occurrence. “While you were asleep, a doctor took care of you… Did everything he could to make you well.”

She blinked at him, confusion lacing across her face. It was true that she was not ordinarily able to sit up after an encounter with the locals of one village or another. But the idea that someone had actually gone out of their way to make her well? Perhaps it was the mugginess in her head, but such an alien notion was not one she could fully wrap her mind around at the moment.

Seeing the expectant look on the guard’s face the girl closed her eyes, took a deep, preparatory breathe, and attempted to stand. Aches tore through her legs and needles seemed to bite into her feet. She clenched her mouth shut, made not a sound and, when she swayed, caught herself on the wall. Satisfied that she could at least remain upright, the guard turned, implying that she should trail after.

He continued to speak over his shoulder as she followed him out of the cell. “It’s all because of the High Priest,” he explained. “You owe him your life.”

Her eyebrows creased as her forehead knitted together. Doing what she could to follow, the girl blinked hazily down at the ground. … _High …Priest?_

**…**

His footsteps reverberating, Seto made his way through the halls at a pace he knew to be faster than prudent. Still, he could not help himself. He wanted to speak to her. To find out who she was. How she came to still be in Egypt. …To know if she still remembered him, as he now remembered her.

All such thoughts flew from his mind as he rounded the corner and found the door to her cell flung open and the guards lounging idly against the walls. Dread constricted him. Seto billowed past them and into the cell, his head whipping every which way. She was nowhere. She was gone. Someone had discovered her. _“…Oh no.”_ Then, in a quiet fury, he rounded on one of the guards. “And _where,_ exactly, has our guest gone?!” he hissed.

“I- I thought you knew, Master Seto,” the luckless man spluttered back. “Lord Akhenaden sent orders that she was to be taken away.”

“He did _what?”_ Seto’s eyes budged. His master, Akhenaden? The only Priest besides himself and Shada who knew about the girl. “Did he say _why?”_

“Because,” Seto turned at the sound of his mentor’s voice. Akhenaden was leaning against the doorframe of the cell, arms crossed. “I felt that it most sensible to have her examined properly. Honesty Seto,” he said, a look of mild surprise on his face at the hostility in Seto’s eye. “What are you thinking? The priority is the Pharaoh and the kingdom that you have been entrusted to protect. Isis said she needed a vessel? Well, _here_ was a vessel, of sorts. So, I ordered that she be taken to the _underground_ at once. Though, admittedly, it has been a long time since I have been there myself.”

Seto’s shoulder slumped. His master’s simple explanation put him to shame. Of course the Pharaoh and the kingdom came before all else. He felt hot with his own disgrace and did not meet his master’s eye. As for the _underground-_ Seto did what he could to fight down a childish slight. He had, himself, intended to go and inspect the long forgotten place once he had collected enough kas. To learn that his master already knew of it, and had been there himself, made the young High Priest feel foolish and overeager.

Mutely he nodded at his recovered master, and followed him.

The Priests Seto and Akhenaden swept down the darkening halls of the Palace’s lower levels. Seto had to admit that, despite their last dispute and his own guilt after the attack on his mentor’s life, it was good to have the old man by his side again. Seto walked at a speedy pace. He had not yet seen the facilities in which the ka were harvested and, now calmed that that the girl was in the care of his watchful master, Seto felt enthralled at the prospect of the _underground._

“So, you say she truly is a woman who harbors a _god?”_ Akhenaden hissed, panting to keep up with his disciple, as he now himself broached the topic of the girl.

Seto’s jaw tightened. He could _not_ regret his choice in sharing knowledge of her with his master. “Yes,” he simply said instead. “When I was on the ka hunt in the city we found her with Shada’s Millennium Key. We also have another prisoner…” Seto’s thought flickered to the criminal and his curse, before banishing him from his mind, “…who witnessed her White Dragon god with his own eyes.”

“A White Dragon…” Akhenaden sounded disbelieving, but not disinterested. Not at all.

“You are welcome to confirm it with your Millennium Eye,” Seto hurried to add. The gods forbid that his mentor suspect that he harbored any kindness towards this woman, “Lord Akhenaden.”

They walked on, footsteps echoing through the high-roofed ceilings of the unused corridors. “Seto…” Akhenaden broke the silence between them at last. “If something _has_ happened to the Pharaoh...” Seto’s nerve pricked, “then we have lost the protection of the Three Great Gods.” Akhenaden was, of course, referring to the three Hidden Gods, the Giant of the Palace, the Hawk with the Wings of the Sun, and the Dragon King of the Heavens, whose names had been hidden to all but the chosen Pharaoh. This Pharaoh. “And that means that the Palace is helpless.”

Had any other man said so much, Seto would not have stood for it. But, from his mentor, he listened.

“We need a ka _stronger_ than those gods.” Seto’s eye slid to look at Akhenaden’s face as the older man spoke. He felt cautious. Since when did _he_ feel cautious? “Strong enough to bring _anyone_ to their knees.” Of course. Yes. Seto did not disagree with the sentiment. However… “Yes,” Akhenaden seemed to have quite forgotten Seto was there, and was now simply uttering his own frenzied thoughts. “And one more thing…We need a leader! _A new Pharaoh!!”_

Seto faltered in his footsteps.

The word ‘pharaoh’ echoed off the walls, and back against Seto’s affronted ear. A volt went up his spine. “Only the missing Pharaoh can summon the Three Great Gods,” he cut in. He did not want to hear this, least of all from his master.

And yet he would have to hear, as Akhenaden continued without giving sway to Seto’s point. “To become the next Pharaoh, one needs even _greater_ power… one needs _new gods_ to fill Egypt’s needs.” Seto blinked, not now daring to look into his mentor’s impassioned eye. _Now_ who was speaking blasphemy? “Seto.” Despite himself, he met his master’s gaze. Seto blinked. There was something dark in the man’s eye which he had not seen there before. “You must gain power to surpass the gods! You are the one in Isis’s prediction. The _vessel_ to become the Pharaoh…”

Seto opened his mouth. However, before he could make any answer they had turned a corner, and Seto was forced to throw a hand up to shield his eyes as the light of a lantern assailed them for the first time in this descent into darkness. A small, withered man with an unpleasant face that resembled a compressed tomato emerged from the shadows behind the light, holding the lantern. His name was Gebelk, and he had been with the Palace for many years, though few had seen him, and certainly none in the upper court. Seto knew him, of course. After all, Gebelk filled the vital role of Master of Prisons. “I have been waiting,” he whispered moistly, smiling at first one High Priest, and then the other. “Lord Seto, Lord Akhenaden.” A glint of sickly enthusiasm bristled in his half-closed eye. It was not every day that he could showcase his handiwork to such an esteemed audience. The hunched figure of a man guided the Guardians to a set of stairs that would take them still deeper into the lower tiers of Palace, to its very foundations. “This leads to the _underground_ prison wing,” his words echoed down the stairwell and back up again. “Please watch your step.” Akhenaden used one of the walls to steady himself as he descended behind Seto. It was slick with the damp. “The Pharaoh doesn’t even know this place exists.” Gebelk said with authority, like a noble giving a tour of his estate, “This facility had been closed since Akhenamkhanen’s reign. I had quite a time finding the keys to the torture chambers…” His smiling silhouette reflected like a grimace against the walls by the light of the lantern.

As they descended the stairs Seto learned from Gebelk what progress the little man had made on the ka extraction. It appeared that _hunger_ and _fear_ were the best stimuli to bring out _violence_ within a ka. However, to make it grow, one needed something more. Seto had been harvesting men with _monster ka,_ which were different from the _spirit ka_ that he and the other High Priests processed. _Spirit ka_ were born alongside the soul, and were strengthened with training and meditation. It was the secret to strengthening _monster ka_ that Gebelk had sworn to find for Seto. 

The three men now stood before a pair of doors, guarded by soldiers that Seto recognized to be his own and Akhenaden’s. The doors towered out of sight and let loose a creak of the hinges with a low groan on the woodwork when the solders opened them on command. The High Priests found themselves in a vast chamber with a gaping abyss at its center, plummeting into darkness. The smell of sick and blood assailed their nostrils. Seto looked around, awed by the magnitude of the space. Every wall was bedecked with all manner of torture devices. In the center, suspended over the void, were several tiers of what appeared to be bridges, planks and levels, descending down until, after a twenty-foot drop of absolutely nothing, there was one final platform riddled with spikes, making any fall instantly fatal. At the far end of the chamber stood a pedestal, prepared with two thrones for Seto and Akhenaden.

“Please,” Gebelk gestured, “please, _have a seat.”_

Seto eased himself onto his throne, side by side with Akhenaden, and his sense of wonder now only swelled as he directed his full attention to the suspended tiers and levels before him. _What is this?!_ Thrill and terror filled him. Before his eyes men and monsters were battling on the suspended platforms filled with pitfalls and, Seto now noted, on the lowest level of spikes he saw bodies already impaled and limp. _An arena!_ As Seto watched, and as the men cried out in anger, the monsters swelled before his eyes. A thrilled smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “I can’t _believe_ they had kas such as these…”

“No, Lord Seto,” Gebelk interjected, too proud to even contain himself. “When I first saw these criminals, their ka were _small_ and _weak._ I _raised_ them. Those two have been fighting on and off for thirty-four hours, as the candlewax burns. They were given only one rule when they began.” Gebelk’s smirk contorted his face to the point that his eyes seemed lost in the folds of his own wrinkled expression. “Only _one man_ may leave the arena alive.” He was positively gleeful. “At first there were ten prisoners in the arena. But those two are the only ones left.” Now once more Seto directed his attention to the bodies already skewered on the lowest tier of the suspended arena. “Lord Seto,” Gebelk dragged his attention back. “What makes a monster ka strong… _is the wielder’s desire to live.”_

Seto’s eyes widened. _The will to live? Could it truly be so simple?_ Certainly enough, both men in the arena were bloodied, their wounds swollen, and their bodies severely taxed. And _still_ they threw their spirits into the fight with equal ferocity. Gebelk was a disgusting little excuse for a man, to be certain, now yelping out, _“KILL_ AND GROW STRONGER!! _Now strike down your opponent lest you be struck down yourself!!”_ Seto smirked up at the monsters. But Gebelk did produce very satisfactory results.

“Lord Seto.” One of his guards approached the pedestal where he and the still silent Akhenaden sat. “We’ve brought the woman.” With this the guard gestured to a cage- a cage just like that of the slavers’ caravan, in which the white haired girl stood at the back of the chamber. But she had no eyes for him. Her eyes were only for the horror and carnage being battled out over their heads. She gripped onto the bars with her hands, just as she had done all those years before.

Seto’s mind went blank. _Here? They brought her… **here?** _He slowly turned to look at his guard in concealed horror. _This_ was where Akhenaden had sent her? It was true that he had not before seen the facilities Gebelk used to test the natures of human ka. There had been too many matters, with the attack on Akhenaden and the disappearance of the Pharaoh. So when he agreed with his master that the guards should have brought the Lady of the White Dragon… but he had not meant _here._

 _Where exactly did you mean?_ A nasty little voice in his head asked. _Your chamber?_ And then, by the mercy of all the gods, she was standing before him. They had hauled her from her cage, and she was standing before him. Seto half rose from his seat. Here she was, amid the stench of guts and blood, by the half-light of the flickering torches lining the walls and the implements of pain flitting in and out of shadow, she now stood, a splash of light against the otherwise complete darkness.

Of all the ways that he had spent the last four days offhandedly imagining their first encounter, it had not been like this.

Seto’s jaw clenched as one of the two guards that had escorted her shoved her forward, and she stumbled, still clearly uneasy on her feet. One hand raised to push the loose strands of white hair out of her face, she looked up. Their eyes met. For the first time in five years, five years that had taken them both through so much, their eyes met.

And Seto saw, even by the half-light of this chamber of the _underground,_ the shock flit across her face as she too _remembered him._

Five years ago he had looked into those eyes, the eyes of a child, through a slaver’s cage. Now _he_ was the slaver. Weak and sick to his stomach, Seto eased himself back into his seat. Their eyes remained locked. Through the politics, the disappearance of the Pharaoh, and even the desperate need of the kingdom, a clarity broke upon Seto that was his and his alone. It was a clarity he had not felt since the night he had felt compelled, he knew not why, to _save_ her. And now here she stood, flanked by his guards, in his torture chamber. _Oh gods, what have I done._

**…**

The girl was no stranger to the smell of death. After all, it had followed after her all her life. From the threshold of her parents’ house, through the cargo slave ship that had fished her out of the water, down the caravan and, once she had been freed, though every town that left its beggars out in the hot sun to bloat and puss. 

Death was an old friend of hers.

But not so good a friend that she could casually look into the face of one whom she though claimed by death long before, in a country far from this one. And yet, here was that face _again_. The skin was darker. The hair was different. The eyes were a shade of blue which they had not been before. This was the boy who had saved her from the caravan. She squinted at him. Strange… but in all the years that had separated that night from this, she had almost come to regard him as a spirit of her own wild imaginings.

Yet, side by side with an older man with a golden eye, here sat that boy, now grown into a man.

The moment broke as a foul little person came between them, arms open as though to envelop her. She flinched away. “Well,” he leered at her as so many had done before. She reached up for the hood she had stitched into her dress to hide her hair, only to find that she had been garbed afresh, and that there was no hood. Her fingers scraped at thin air. The little man spoke on. “So _this_ is the girl who harbors a god.” Her fingers stilled. Her mouth went dry. Without taking note the man turned to the Priest whom she remembered as a boy. “My Lord, it will be _easy_ for me to find.”

The girl’s lips tightened. Her fingers curled. _A god?_ What were they talking about? She looked into that little man’s dead eyes. Finding no answers there save the desire to ingratiate himself with his overloads, she turned her eyes back onto the man whom they called ‘Lord,’ and ‘High Priest.’ She swallowed. _Surely not. Surely not you, whose face I recalled as a dream for these last five years. Who gave me hope such as I had not felt since long before even then…_

His gaze was still rooted to her. She blinked at him. One way or the other he _had_ saved her from the mob of villagers. For that much at least she owed the man her thanks. “My Lord,” she spoke at last, her voice still weak. His jaw clenched and his gaze intensified. She continued. “I have no way to thank you for saving my life…” The girl placed a hand on her heart. “You have my eternal gratitude,” she said quietly, inclining in a bow. After all, this was the second time this man had come to her aid. For better or worse.

He did not say anything. The silence dragged on between them. Finally, she glanced back up to see if he had even heard her. He was still staring at her, fixated. “Woman,” he finally answered. A shivered went up and down her spine at that voice. It was not the voice of the boy whom she had met five years before. It was the voice of a man. It was a voice from an all too distant memory. He paused, swallowed, and then, as it seemed he was about to ask a question, was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream from the suspended platforms over the great chasm.

The girl turned and watched in horror as the monsters suspended in the chains of the different tiers expanded in size before her eyes. Her lips pressed together and her eyes went wide. She was no foreigner to monsters. Beasts of the darkness were just the sort that had followed in her every shadow since her childhood. But that did not mean that she had ever wanted to see them again by the light of day. “My Lord,” she whispered, electing for control of her voice over volume as she addressed the young man. “Why have I been brought here? What is this place?”

It was the young High Priest whom she asked. It was the nasty little man who answered. _“This_ is an underground prison,” he cooed at her, wet eyes and lips glistening. “Specifically, this is the arena where the monsters in men’s hearts are given free reign.”

 _…Free reign? You want to give it **free reign?**_ In mute horror she turned to look at the young man who had brought her to this place. _You have no concept of what you are dealing with._

So full was the girl’s mind that she hardly even heard the little man prattle on. “Why are you so surprised by the prisoners’ ka?” he chuckled, misreading her silence. “Surely you know…” he pointed to her chest with all the expert knowledge that he did not possess. “…You have felt the demon you carry within your own heart… There is a ka inside _your_ soul as well.”

Mutely, the girl turned back from the man whom she had thought to have been a friend, to the finger now pointed at her heart. She stared at it, numb. _A ka? Is that what you think? Just another one of your shadow monster, born of this desert land, which you think you can actually control?_ How wrong they were. What was inside of her was much different from anything they had ever seen. She began to shake her head, resolute. “What ka in my soul?” She said in a deadpan. She knew she could not detour them, but she had to deny them all the same. “There’s _nothing_ like that inside of me.” It was not even entirely a lie. There was nothing like any of the monsters they had seen before inside of her.

The young High Priest interjected. “All living things have an energy that normal people can’t see,” he explained, as though he thought that the girl needed clarification. She did not. She knew perfectly well what they were referring to. It was _they_ who had no idea of what they were trifling with. Still, it was sympathetic enough of him to attempt the explanation. “Some people can give this energy a physical form with the power of their soul, their _ba_. This is what we call _ka_ … and you call monsters.” He had no idea what it was that she called ‘monsters.’ The thing inside of her _was_ a monster. She stared at him, mute to his explanation. “You too have this power!” The High Priest uttered earnestly, as though he was telling her anything _worthy._ Why was he even trying to make her understand what they were doing to her? It was clear no one else cared to. Why did _he_ care? “They say your power surpasses even a _spirit ka…_ and rivals that of the _three Gods…”_ He concluded, eyes fixed on her to gauge her reaction to this news. There was none. Her face remained blank. Silence hung between them.

“My Lord,” the little man turned to the High Priest, away from the girl. “Let us determine the extent of that power _right now.”_ Both the Priest and the girl looked at him questioningly. “It’s simple,” the man smiled, several of his teeth missing. “We make her fight the prisoners _in the arena!”_

All of the feeling seemed to leave her body. Blankly, she turned her head back from the men deciding her future, to the men who would shortly kill her. Currently, both monsters had found soft flesh and were tearing at each other’s stomach, blood spurting over all of the chains and platforms. _In the arena?_ Vaguely, the girl thought that it must have been a good thing she had not eaten earlier. She would invariably have heaved it all back up now.

The monsters roared in pain and savage frenzy behind the little man as he continued to speak, gesturing about himself as though he was simply offering a new set of drapes for a room, or perhaps a different daybed. “When this girl’s heart is filled with _fear,”_ he explained, “she will involuntarily summon her ka! It will come to her side to _defend_ her!”

The girl wanted to cry out. She wanted to cut in against this moronic little creature who had no concept of what he was talking about. She wanted to say to all present that what they were proposing would _not work._ That it had _never_ worked. But she knew that they would not believe her. Her eyes flitted to the young High Priest whom she had only just thanked minutes before. _They will think that I say it only to save my own skin._ If only they knew how useless a thing her own skin really was to her. But they did not. And they would not believe her. So the girl remained mute as the men around her debated her fate.

And yet, the young High Priest did not immediately acquiesce to the hunched man’s request. “Are you sure?” he first said, his eyes darting from the man to the girl and back again. Then, as though to explain his actions, he continued. “She doesn’t even know what it _is!_ How could she _control_ it?”

The girl blinked at him. Was he… _stalling_ for her? She tried to take another step back, away from the arena. One of the guard’s gripped hard into her shoulder, and pain laced through her as his fingers dug into a place that a rock had smashed days before.

“If she is truly possessed by a _god_ it will be simple for her to defeat the ka of a mere criminal,” the little man rationalized in response to the High Priest’s objections.

“You cannot be serious about this. She might die!” The Priest blurted out. The girl looked at him, not entirely comprehending. It had been a very long time since she had heard the emotion that she once known to be… _concern._

However, just as the little man seemed about to give way beneath the edict of his master, the older man who sat in the second throne shifted. _“Enough._ Stop being so naive!” He cut in, turning to fix the eye which was not made of gold upon the younger priest. The girl flinched. How was it possible for the flesh eye to be more frightening than the golden one? His words were more frightening still. “Let us test the power of gods.” His words brooked no argument. “In this case the innocent must be punished in order to benefit the greater good of our people! Trust me. This girl may be the key to the survival of Egypt!”

Were she not so near to collapsing the girl might very well have laughed. A sick little grin flitted across her lips, if only for a second. Once before had the power within her been considered the key to the survival of an empire. That empire was now swept from the face of the earth, and she its sole survivor.

Meanwhile, the old man’s callousness seemed to take even his fellow priest aback, as the young man blinked at him, seemingly too dumbstruck to respond. The grizzled one-eyed man continued. “Without the Pharaoh, the Palace is wide open,” he said. “We have no gods to protect us! We must make a new god as soon as possible! If not… anarchy… **_destruction.”_**

 _All of which I carry in my wake, whether you control the dragon inside of me more no,_ the girl thought, staring at the ground.

The young Priest was genuinely trying to keep her from the battle. She blinked up at him. He now even attempted to stand against the passion of his elder, though the look in the older man’s eye left him stripped of words. “But–”

The older High Priest waited no longer. He rose fully from his throne in a swell of white robes, and pointed at the girl. “Put that woman in the arena!”

“Yes sir!” the two guards chorused. The girl barely felt them now as they gripped into her, her head lulled back, and eyes fixed on the monsters before her. Her feet dragged as the forced her forward.

“Do as they say,” the quieted order came from her right. She blinked up at the scene before her, before tearing her eyes away to look at the man who had spoken. She was now standing side by side with the throne of the young High Priest. He sat, arms crossed, his own gaze resolutely fixed on the arena ahead and not on her. She blinked at him. He swallowed. “Get ready,” he whispered.

Her lips tightened. _“Seto,”_ she at last uttered the name that no one in this palace had told her, and that she had once screamed out from the back of a horse. _“Please. Help_ me– _”_ In the next instant she was shoved onto the drawbridge that descended to link to the suspended platform of spikes.

**…**

_“Now go!”_ One of the guards shoved her down the drawbridge and Seto watched as how, on unsteady legs, she teetered and stumbled across to the platform and to the impaled bodies that stood out starkly against the iron spikes. Every creak of the woodwork resounded against his ear like a thunderclap as he stared blankly ahead of him. She remembered him. She _more_ than remembered him. She had whispered his name like a last plea for salvation. And he had disgraced that by bringing her here. By allowing her onto the drawbridge. He had disgraced her memory of his name. …Just as Akhenaden had accused him of disgracing the name of the Pharaoh.

She made it across and righted herself. And, when she did, the girl looked up to find herself faced with the two now bloated beasts towering over her. From here Seto could see how those pale knees began to shake. She did not move. The girl was constricted by fear.

The great chamber went silent as the clash between the two convicts _stilled_ and they slowly turned to look upon the new arrival. “What the…” one panted.

“It’s a girl!” the other rasped, squinting down from the upper tiers, running the back of his hand across his bleeding lip.

“Is she a prisoner too?” The chains that upheld the different levels groaned as the monsters latched onto them and, using them as supports, slowly twisted to face the small wisp of a girl.

“Who cares?” The fatter of the two guffawed, a welt across his stomach leaking. “If she’s in here that means we can do what we want with her.” He rocked back and forth on the shackles that upheld him, making a lewd gesture in the air. “Let’s take a little break,” he wheezed with a smile to the man who had only moment before been his enemy- now his ally. Then, with a sharp gesture, he threw an arm out to point at the girl and one of the monsters – a spiderlike creature – shot out a web of rope that bound the girl’s hands down. She gasped and, her balance undone, stumbled backward, to the brink, where she teetered.

Seto’s fingers gripped on the arms of his throne, his knuckles going white. He could not stand for this. He could not. He had promised to protect her. He had _sworn_ _an oath,_ on _bended knee._ Seto blinked. Sworn? An oath? …Where had he gotten such an idea?

Meanwhile, men and monsters rounded on the girl. All eyes were upon her, riveted.

“Don’t hold back your rage, my dear! Show us the beast that dwells within!!” Gebelk jeered across the expanse. “It will be just as I said,” he cackled at Seto’s side, rubbing his hands together in anticipation of having his experiments confirmed before two High Priests of the inner court. “When _fear of annihilation_ floods her body, her ka will be called forth, and her desire to live will make her ka strong!”

The desire to live was, of course, imperative for his formula to succeed. The monsters plunged for the attack.

The world seemed to mute, as though a great hand had clamped over Seto’s ears. He did not even realize he had risen from his seat. He did not hear himself scream out, _“Call the ka now!!”_ his eyes fixed on the girl. _Why does she hesitate? …Perhaps she is not who I thought?_ Then, for one instant so brief that if he had blinked he would have missed it, she turned her head a fraction to look back at him, before returning to the monsters.

The girl then closed her eyes, and lowered her head. She was finished. She knew it, if the men on the platform behind her did not.

 _No,_ Seto thought, looking about himself frantically. _I cannot allow this madness to continue._

“What’s wrong with her?” Gebelk panicked, seeing now that his overlords’ most precious prisoner might very well die on his watch. _“She isn’t resisting?”_

Akhenaden stared, riveted _. I was told that this child possesses the most powerful creature ever imagined. So then why does she not call it forth to protect herself?_ Perhaps the answer might come to him through the mind-reading powers of his Millennium Eye. The man raised two fingers to his temple and fixed his gaze upon the girl. Through the power of the Eye he saw such a brightness radiating off of her that it seared into him. Her silhouette gleamed against the grime and gloom of the underground and burned into his skull. It was as beautiful as it was terrible, and as tantalizing in the instant as it was impossible to bear. “Argh! That light!” he hissed. “It’s blinding!” He clamped a hand over the Millennium Eye, as though mere flesh could protect him from the burn imprinted upon him by this strange woman’s very spirit.

And still she did not defend herself.

Seto then understood. He understood as though it had been whispered into his ear. Her poise. Her posture. It all indicated one thing. _She’s prepared to die._ The harrowing truth echoed in his mind. The will to live was the one thing required. The will to live was the one thing she did not have. 

In a world of silence, it was the only truth that resounded.

She would not defend herself. She had finished fighting. After however many years of torment and struggle she was prepared for it all to end here, before his eyes. …Well, he would be damned if he was prepared for it to end. Not now. Not when he had just found her again. Once more Seto did not hear himself call forth, now his own _spirit ka,_ Duos. The armor clad warrior was simply there suddenly, by his side. Just as, with a leap and a resounding creak from the woodwork of the drawbridge, he too was suddenly by _her_ side.

As though he, Seto, was her ka whom she had summoned to her side.

Duos battered off the two assailants, sending them back into a standstill. Seto unsheathed the knife which rested within his Millennium Rod, and cut through the web that entangled her. He then moved to stand in front of the girl, his arm out to shield her. He wanted to yell at her. _Why won’t you call the White Dragon?_ He wanted to demand an explanation for why it was she was so ready to forfeit her life! His eyes locked with hers once again and his words, whatever they had been, caught in his throat. Suddenly, there was only one question that mattered. The same as that he had tried to ask earlier, at the thrones, when he had been interrupted. The only question that had ever really mattered, and to which, after five years, he needed to have an answer.

“Lady,” he asked. “…What is your name?”

As the girl blinked through the fear and the shock, the smallest of smiles flitted across her thin lips, and a calm seemed to settle on her shoulders. As her lips formed the sounds, Seto’s ears finally unstuck, and he heard again. “Kisara. …My name is Kisara.”


	11. The Abyss

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Seto Kaiba has achieved his objective. A duel with Pegasus. A chance to win back his brother's soul. But as the duel rages on and he sees the toll it seems to take on Kisara Pegasus, Kaiba is faced with the irrefutable proof that his destructive actions come with a terrible cost.

Book I | **The Abyss**

Duelist Kingdom Arc

Part VI

_Seto Kaiba: 18 years old_

_Kisara Pegasus: 16 years old_

**…**

In the castle Kaiba stood on an automated bridge overhanging a chasm he could only assume had once been an oubliette. Perhaps it still was, under Pegasus’s reign. On either side of him were two balconies– the one on his left, some ten feet above him, wrapping the entire wall, and the one on his right at eye level, small, and with a single throne upon it. However, the master of the castle was not currently on his throne, but before him, on the bridge, over the abyss. It would have taken nothing at all for Kaiba to hurl him down and be done with it. His fingers itched for it. But then, he remembered Mokuba’s limp form in the dungeons.

Yugi, Joey, and the rest of their cohort had filed onto the balcony to his left. Kaiba was shocked to see them, having defeated Yugi mere hours before– but also secretly relived. Of all things, the sight gave him reassurance. He was pleased that the boy would still have a chance to fight for his grandfather, as he himself would now fight for Mokuba.

The arena lowered between him and Pegasus. Kaiba had been unable to use his Duel Disk. Pegasus’s price for the use of Kaiba’s technology during their duel was that Mokuba, or what was left of him, operate it. And Pegasus had brought out Kaiba’s little brother, soulless, on a _chain._ Kaiba’s rage thrashed against his ribcage. The dirt and squalor that had horrified him in the darkness of the dungeon now stood stark and grotesque in the light on his little brother’s eleven year old face. Pegasus grinned at Kaiba patronizingly, as though to say that, for all of his titles and technical innovations, Kaiba still hadn’t learned that _fighting_ wasn’t the only way to inflict damage on an enemy. A man’s spirit could be broken in much easier ways.

Pegasus’s one good eye flitted to the smaller, vacant balcony, as though he could see something the rest could not.

Kaiba had been unable to do anything. He could not fight a duel, even in body, against his little brother. _“You win,”_ he uttered, before the duel had even begun. They would not use Kaiba’s Duel Disks. He would not have the edge. And Mokuba’s vacant eyes haunted him as, with two tugs on his chain, Pegasus’s men took the little boy back out of his brother’s sight.

 _“You’re a creep … and a monster,”_ Kaiba whispered, his voice weary and quivering with disgust.

“Watch it, Kaiba, you’re in my world now.” The creator’s voice had lost its mock-playful tone and was all ruthlessness now. “Defeat me in a duel, and I’ll release him as promised. But,” he smiled at Kaiba that same predatory smile that had stretched across his face in the dungeons, _“fail,_ and not only will his soul remain in bondage, _but yours will join it.”_ And with those words the rules of the game were set and, unbeknownst to Kaiba, it became a Shadow Game.

“We’ve known each other for a long time,” Kaiba called across the battlefield, his mind flickering back to when he had been just a boy and he had phoned his idol in the middle of the night… when he had asked him to take in the girl he had seen that afternoon at the orphanage. “Now we’ll finally see if the Master is the Duel Monsters’ Creator, or the Champion.” Since the night of the gala, since they had first shaken hands, Kaiba had always somewhere known that it would come to this.

 _Time to duel._ Night fell on Duelist Kingdom. The two titans clashed. It had been at least three days now that Seto Kaiba had gone without sleep. For the last twelve hours he had been fighting Yugi Mutou. The day and night before that he had landed on the island, fought Joey Wheeler, and had run the dungeons with Kisara – speaking to her for the first time in in six years. And before that… the helicopter. He’d had no food or sleep in over seventy-two hours. He drew his cards and, as he did so, he felt that someone he could not see was staring at him. Fortune favored him. He had drawn the _Blue-Eyes_ with his first hand.

As they dueled Pegasus behaved like a child, mourning the loss of a monster with despair in one instant, only to gloat with glee the next as he set his own cards down. And all the while, it was as though he could read Kaiba’s every thought and predict his every move. That golden Eye of his caught the light and flashed.

Kaiba stared at him across the field. _I’ll just play something that I know he can’t defend against._ He took the card which had always been his truest defender.

“I use the card _Prophesy._ ” Pegasus cut in. “It gives me the right to guess whether your card has an Attack Power higher or lower than 2000. And if I manage to guess correctly, Kaiba-boy, then the card in question _becomes mine.”_

Kaiba stared at him, mutely, knowing that his hand was shaking for them all to see. Suddenly he was overwhelmed with the desire to push the card back into his hand. To protect it, as he had failed to protect it so entirely for the last many months. As he had failed to protect _her._

Pegasus guessed right, and then he went one further. He closed his eyes, humming ridiculously. “But wait, _wait._ Something else is coming. Yes…yes! I see Blue! I see White!” Kaiba’s hands felt clammy. “Could it _be_ … Yes! Of course! I see the _Blue-Eyes White Dragon!”_

**…**

Wordlessly, Kisara stepped out of the shadows on the right-hand balcony and before the throne of her father– into the field of the Shadow Game.

“Enough! Here, take it!” Kaiba snarled, slamming the card down on the table. A flap spun and flipped over, spinning again on Pegasus’s side, card within the older man’s grasp.

Pegasus plucked it from the playing board and brandished it about. “Now the most valuable card in your deck is mine!” He grinned, before fixing his gaze on the newest arrival. _“Ah,_ Angel-face, how nice of you to join us.”

They all turned to look at her. Yugi, Tea, Tristan, Joey, her father, the other duelists, Bakura and Seto. For the first time she appeared now before them all. She swept her eyes across the field before her, with duelists across from her and duelists above the chasm. Alone, on the little balcony, she took in all the players of this macabre act. Barely capable of standing straight, sick and deathly with the pains and poisons that wracked her body, she gripped into the handle of her cane as though she were immovable. Self-consciously, Kisara looked down at herself, and attempted to smooth out the dirt smears on that same blue cardigan. She then returned the gazes of the crowd, before moving on to her father, who was sliding the _Blue-Eyes_ card into his hand demonstratively.

“Now I have two things you care about Kaiba,” he said with a giggle. “Your dragon, and your brother. _Let’s see what else I can take.”_ Kisara. It was a very real, vocal threat about the girl who had just entered the chamber. He was threatening Kaiba with Kisara.

“I hardly think that’s necessary, father.” Her quiet voice somehow reverberated through the room and, in its own way, acted as a threat. The parent and child locked eyes.

 _“Father?”_ Joey whispered, turning to Yugi. “Wait, hold up. Back up a bit. Pegasus has _a kid?_ Since when? Why have we not heard about this before? Who is she?!”

“That’s Kisara Pegasus,” Bakura whispered. “He adopted her six years ago, when she was ten years old. Sixteen now. Doesn’t play Duel Monsters. Said to be something of a prodigy in aircraft mechanics and execution. She’s also supposed to be in the top five fastest runners in her age group in the United States of America.”

“…She doesn’t look like much of a runner right now,” Tristan noted, craning over the balcony. “And what’s with the hair and the pallor. I mean, pale is pale, but that’s just–”

“Forget the pallor,” Mai Valentine, a tall blond woman and one of the other finalists of the Tournament butt in, “Look at the way Kaiba’s _looking_ at her.”

Kaiba looked as though he was about to walk straight off the bridge. He was gripping into the walls of his arena so tightly that it seemed he would break through the frame. And his eyes were riveted on Kisara with an expression that mixed absolute relief with sheer horror, as though there was no one in this world he would rather see less, and no one in this world he would rather see here.

The duelists on the upper balcony exchanged looks of disbelief. Bakura stared, fixated.

Kisara turned to look at Kaiba. To the whole room it was clear that, while they did not say a word, they spoke volumes. She then looked up to the other duelists. “Apologies for any interruption,” she said in a quiet, paced voice. “I’m Kisara Pegasus. I see you’ve already met my father. I’m just here to… _arbitrate.”_ Gingerly, she lowered herself into her father’s throne. With a sigh of relief as the chair took her weight, she leaned back, closed her eyes momentarily, and then looked once more to her father. It was in the little benign smile that she gave him that the resemblance in their mannerisms struck – that it was clear she’d lived under his roof for the past six years. She smiled like a force of nature to be reckoned with.

The duel went on. Kaiba attempted to infect Pegasus’s deck with the same _Crush Card_ virus he had used on Yugi’s deck only earlier that day. And Pegasus deflected it with unnerving deftness. Pegasus toyed with him. The fatigue of the many sleepless days and nights began to take its toll. Kaiba looked to Kisara– and she kept her gaze fixed on him knowing that, should she look away for an instant, he might drift off into open sea. She was his final anchor. 

Pegasus drew a card. “Tell me something, my old friend,” he addressed Kaiba, “did you like watching cartoons in your youth?” An ironic thing to ask an eighteen year old. Kaiba stared back at him, unblinking. “Is that a _no?_ Kaiba, you’re even more cold-hearted than I thought. For me,” he visibly sighed, “they were the absolute best. Oh, how I’d spend hours watching the never ending antics!”

Kisara pressed her lips together. More than once, when she was ten, eleven and even twelve, had she and her father sat on the couch together, watching the umpteenth episode of _Funny Bunny._ The memory only hurt now.

“Welcome, Kaiba,” Pegasus flourished his arms about, “to _Toon World!”_ Card set, a green book careened onto the scene and from it a popup medieval town burst onto the arena in fumes of violet smoke. Several of the duelists covered their mouths, coughing. “Let the fun begin,” Pegasus leered. Within moments it became clear how deadly the playful looking storybook was. A card that had never been released into circulation because it was considered too powerful, _Toon World_ transformed any monster into a cartoon version of itself, who could then escape into the hardcovers of the book, impregnable to any attack, and from which he could accost his enemy at will, before fleeing back into his leather-bound sanctuary. “Well,” Pegasus said, surveying his magical book of terrors with satisfaction. “Why don’t I now show off some _real_ Toon power?” He thumbed through the cards in his hand. “And what better way to demonstrate than on a card I stole from _you.”_

Kisara’s jaw set. Pegasus brandished the _Blue-Eyes_. She did not even know whom her father was talking to, her or Kaiba. All she knew was that she could feel her nails digging into the arms of the throne as she sat rigid, poised for the pain. Kisara wondered, whom exactly of the two of them was he trying to hurt more?

Kaiba whispered, _“No…”_

Kisara shook her head mutely. Both had eyes only for the card in Pegasus’s hand.

Pegasus laughed before smiling ferociously at Kaiba. _“Please._ Allow me to show you what your beast is capable of under _my_ control!” After all, she had been under his control for the last six years. Then too he had acquired her because of Seto Kaiba. “Blue-Eyes White Dragon!” He declared, setting the card on the table. He turned toward his daughter and whispered, _“…awaken.”_

The dragon’s roar shook the hanging arena as it tore onto the battlefield in a shower of sparks. Kaiba’s face contorted in dread. For the first time in his life the beast that had always protected him and had been his final shield now snarled from his opponent’s field.

“Yes!” Pegasus cried out. “Now, cross the threshold into _Toon World!”_ The book opened and, with a plume of smoke and sparks, pulled the dragon down into its pages. The beast cried out in terror. Kisara’s cane, which she had rested on the arm of the throne, clattered to the ground as her four limbs gave one violent shudder. Pegasus did not so much as blanch, while Kaiba all but vaulted across the abyss to her. “Behold,” the creator of Duel Monsters forced Kaiba’s eyes back to the field, “the new and improved _Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon!”_ The book careened through the air, spinning, before falling open. From its pages burst– an _abomination._

Small and bug-eyed, it no longer looked like the dragon on whom every scale gleamed and whose eyes bore the intelligence and shade of human eyes. Now it resembled a flying gremlin and it cackled indecently at Kaiba and at them all. Kisara’s body wrenched. She closed her eyes and sealed her lips against the agony which she had known would come. It was as though her insides were melting just beneath the skin. She did what she could to rein in the pain. After all, aside from her father – and Bakura – no one else here had seen the effects that her connection to the _Blue-Eyes_ could have. Not Yugi. Not his friends. Not the Pharaoh. And not Seto Kaiba.

She fell from the throne.

**…**

_“Kisara!”_ Kaiba tore his eyes from the monstrous little demon, not even attempting to curb the panic in his voice. She had collapsed out of sight, behind the railing. “Kisara- What the hell? What’s happening to you? Kis-” His voice caught in his throat. Slowly, very slowly, the tousled mat of white hair obstructing her face, she was clambering back onto her feet with the aid of her cane. She was shaking. The room remained silent but for the Toon Dragon’s giggle. 

With one turn of her head Kisara Pegasus pushed the hair back out of her face and looked across the void to Seto Kaiba. He swallowed. Her nose was bleeding two red streams down over her lips. The color stood stark against her colorless form. She touched her fingertips to the blood, seemingly almost surprised, before streaking the back of her hand across her nose, smearing the color along her arm. Kaiba said nothing more. Kisara turned to again stare across the chamber at her father, and stood erect, fighting through inhuman pain. Even Pegasus had stopped smiling for an instant. For a second, he almost appeared afraid of her. Her strength of will was one that unnerved even him. Most of all him, who had grown so accustomed to the wills of men bending at his command. Then, she smiled at him. “Please, Father. Allow me to show you what it is capable of under _my_ control.”

Kaiba closed his eyes. He had to make a decision. He looked up and across the void to Kisara, the residue blood smudged across her face. He did not understand what was happening between her and the playing field. At least… he did not think he wanted to understand. But her words resounded in his ears. _Show you what it is capable of under **my** control. _That was something he could understand. That was a notion behind which he could rally.

“Pegasus,” he growled, “your underhanded dueling tactics have gone on long enough.” Whatever pain was attacking Kisara had gone on long enough. Kaiba folded his cards. “It’s time someone put a stop to your cheating ways.” He slapped the cards down onto the table.

Pegasus’s eyes widened, not understanding, his certainty shaken twice in as many minutes.

Kaiba continued, confident, level headed. “I may not know exactly how you’re cheating, but somehow you can see my cards. So… I’m abandoning my present hand.” Pegasus stared at him. “Perhaps if I can’t see what I’m playing, _you can’t either.”_

Perhaps now that he was not even looking at his cards Kaiba would have to believe more than ever in Yugi’s _Heart of the Cards._ The thought came unbidden to his mind. He did not push it away. He reached for the topmost card on his deck. Kaiba tensed. This was his one chance of rescuing his little brother. He drew the card, eye riveted on Pegasus. “I put all my faith into this next card!” It was as though his brother was there with him, guiding him. “So now let it be revealed!” He slammed the card down on the table.

Kisara gripped into the handle of her cane tightly, her forehead creased in concentration. Her eyes shut. The Blue-Eyes White Dragon unleashed a deafening roar as it breached the field.

Pegasus stumbled back, eyes wide with shock. As the beast bore down upon him, his head snapped and he looked at his daughter. They all did. _“You…”_ he hissed. “What do you think you are doing?! Agh!” Pegasus threw up an arm to shield her from his view. Everyone looked from daughter to father and back again. It was almost as though he was trying to block out some sort of light that she was emitting – a light visible only to his Eye. A light that _seared_ into his socket.

Kisara was smiling, looking at none of them in particular. Her eyes, pupils and whites, had taken on a glimmering blue sheen, as though she had some unearthly blindness. As though she was now seeing from somewhere else entirely. The Blue-Eyes turned its head.

“Yug’” Joey leaned into his friend. “What the hell is going on here- _holy shit!”_

Kisara lifted her chin and smiled faintly as her hair rose, whipping and cracking around her as though she were engulfed in a singular torrent of wind. She answered, “Why father, I am simply exercising _control.”_

“I have absolutely no idea…” Yugi breathed back, his own eyes riveted. He had a theory, but it was too bizarre to voice allowed. And yet…what else could it be?

“Explain yourself!” Pegasus spat, averting his eyes, unable any longer to look at her.

 _“Explain myself…”_ she said, as though trying out the notion on her tongue. She spoke over the sound of her own hair cracking in the wind. “Yes, I suppose you would ask that of me. After all, as you realized all too bitterly that first day in the dining hall after my accident– that day you had Mokuba brought to the castle– I am the only person whose mind your Eye _cannot read.”_ Her smile was almost apologetic. “Your _predecessor_ also found it inconvenient.”

For a moment her father was silent, mortal eye rooted on her in what appeared to be fear. Then Pegasus barked out a humorless laugh. “I give you credit, child. You exhumed more of your past-self than I would have thought possible. The pain of those remembrances could not have been easy to bear. So, as you are quite right that I cannot read your mind, _why_ Kisara? Are you doing this out of bitterness?” The playfulness in his voice was undermined by the caution.

Kisara stared ahead, seeing nothing. Her hair whipped about her, her eyes the color of the sea. A strand caught in her mouth. The Blue-Eyes looked from Pegasus to Kaiba, and back again. “No,” Kisara said to her father. “I love you. I will always love you. And I am not so uncertain or insecure a ‘little girl’ to not know that you did love me entirely. No matter how many days separate that from this, there was a moment in time where you adored me with all the emotion with which I love you. And, in honor of that love which you once had for me, and for the love that I still bear for you – I do this now.”

Somewhere in the words it had stopped being clear which of the two men before her Kisara addressed. 

Kaiba did not understand the feeling burning in his chest. His heart beat as though it would burst. He wanted her to look at him. Wanted it badly. Yet her gaze remained unfocused, transformed by whatever sheen had overtaken her.

Pegasus looked from his daughter back onto the arena. He looked past the cartoon creation, and onto the dragon that Kaiba had summoned. “Oh, but she is _beautiful,”_ the creator of Duel Monsters whispered.

Kaiba’s breath caught. Had Pegasus been referring to his daughter, or had he been referring to the dragon? Did Kaiba now have his answer as to whether or not the Blue-Eyes was female? The very question he had not asked all those years ago when he had first called the Pegasus Castle? Did Pegasus refer to both girl and dragon as one?

Joey Wheeler looked down at the scene, from Kaiba, to the young Pegasus girl, to the Blue-Eyes. “I can’t say I understand completely what’s going on but… Kaiba listened to his heart, and it paid off for him bigtime.”

Kaiba twitched at the comment, and looked up at the blond boy. It was strange, but for the first time in his life he saw, not the irksome obstacle who had stood between him and Pegasus’s Castle in the middle of the night, but just what he was – an unkempt, unruly, disobedient young man from the slums. One in whom there was some fight, and some notion of loyalty. The vulnerability that Kaiba had felt when he’d called out to Kisara across the chamber subsided. Yugi Motou. Joey Wheeler. For some reason Kaiba felt that he had entrusted them with his affairs before, on an island not unlike this one. Though Kaiba knew such a notion to be ludicrous. The sleep deprivation was getting to him.

Pegasus was smiling at Kaiba now. It was true that Kaiba had folded his hand so that Pegasus could no longer read what monsters were at his certain disposal. However, the delightful thing about a duelist of Kaiba’s caliber was that he had long since memorized his entire deck. Every monster. Every card. Pegasus didn’t need to see his hand. He could look directly into his mind.

The Toon Dragon attacked, and Kaiba was able to deflect it. However, that would only work for so long. As Kaiba reached for his deck, he hesitated. _I need to destroy that little monstrosity here and now if I’m to have even a chance._ Otherwise– a chill went through him. _Not only would I have lost this duel, but I’d have lost my only chance of winning my brother’s soul back._ He stared down at his cards, and reached for them again. _I have to trust in my deck, for the both of us._

_For all three of us._

He drew the card, and it was perfect. Chains tore across the field and bound the Toon Dragon, weakening it and fixing it to one spot from which it could not escape. Kaiba looked to Kisara. She nodded. She gave him the permission which he did not consciously recognize he needed. Kaiba bellowed for his Blue-Eyes to attack, and it destroyed the Toon. Kisara closed her eyes and rocked back and forth. It hurt her, but she could endure.

The field was clear. “Now do you understand that _nothing_ will stop me from rescuing my brother, Pegasus!?” Kaiba was shaking. Though she had masked the pain he still noted it. He still noted that he’d needed to eliminate his dragon, though a grotesque version of itself, to achieve security. The rush of emotions was one which he could not suppress with the fatigue that he was already battling in his own body. “Even destroying my own Blue-Eyes.” He lowered his head. He could not bear to look at her.

“Daw!” Pegasus teased, though his eyes were fixed warily on the Dragon. “Kaiba-boy! Your treasured _Blue-Eyes White Dragons_ mean so very much to you, don’t they?” He was goading him in front of Kisara. “Well, as creator of Duel Monsters I’m truly touched by your _devotion.”_ He allowed the word to hang uncomfortably in the air. “But,” Pegasus whispered, drawing a card, and once more looking at his daughter, “when will you learn that the same devotion is not returned by the Blue-Eyes.” The comment cut to Kaiba in a way it should not have. An insecurity he had long buried caused his jaw to set. “For as you see,” Pegasus exposed the card he had drawn, “they are not so loyal.”

A _Dragon Capture Jar_ loomed on the field. Made of dark brown clay, with a gargoyle-like face of a dragon molded into its front, it caused the Blue-Eyes on the field to recoil with a hiss, for Kisara to press a blood-stained hand to her mouth, and for her unseeing blue-sheen eyes to widen in fear. “This will make two _Blue-Eyes_ I’ve stolen from you won’t it?” Pegasus said calmly, ignoring his now violently trembling daughter. “How you must _hate_ me,” he said with pure relish.

The smoke from within the Jar plumed into the air. The Dragon’s neck reeled back, trying to get away. Once enveloped, the Blue-Eyes let out a pitiful cry as it thrashed, pulled from Kaiba’s side. Its claw caught at the rim of the Jar. It tried to fight, its head flailing just in view, human eyes bulging with terror. It was sucked into the urn with a sickening squelch. The Jar’s face glowed crimson red, like fire and blood. Kisara doubled over, and wretched into her hand. Blood gushed out of her mouth and through her fingers. She stumbled forward and gripped hold of the railing. The blood dripped down into the abyss.

She screamed into the darkness.

“Kisara! Look at me!” Kaiba did not want to believe what he was seeing. First Mokuba, a hollow shell. And now this. He did not think he could take it anymore. She hung there, on the banister, limp and lifeless. Finally, her bloodied hands leaving stains on the marble, Kisara heaved herself back up, looked back up and their gazes met. She was looking straight at Kaiba. Her eyes were once more her own. They were streaked with tears.

“You see? While I may not be able to press the advantage of my Eye, there are other ways to _skin a lizard_ ,” Pegasus mildly broke the silence, filled otherwise only by Kisara’s ragged panting– as though it was not _his_ daughter bleeding out before him. “Kaiba,” he addressed his shaking opponent. “From the little bit of poking around in your head, I feel that it is only right you should know that you did indeed _‘lose a piece of yourself’_ the day you first fought little Yugi.” Kisara coughed through the blood. “You lost _her.”_

Kaiba’s hands twitched as he remembered again the feeling of the card tearing between his fingers. “Pegasus,” his voice overrode his thoughts. “I don’t know what you are doing to her right now, or what you have been doing to drive her to this state, _but make it stop this instant.”_

A lesser man would have balked. Pegasus smiled. “Oh, you foolish, naïve boy. Did you really think _I_ was the one hurting her?”

 _“Stop it,_ father.” Kisara rasped the words out. Her mouth was like a black cavity in her face, her teeth completely smeared in the blood.

He looked at his wretched daughter with amusement. “You mean you really haven’t told him? Kisara, _Kisara,_ I always did believe that great heart would be the death of you.” He turned to Kaiba. “Four _Blue-Eyes White Dragon_ cards… That’s all that I released into the world. No more. And what have you not done to take possession of them all? Their previous owners– an American, a German, a Hong Konger, and Solomon Mutou of Japan, if I recall them all correctly.”

Kaiba bristled. He didn’t like this. Quite frankly he could have given two shits about what the idiots on the upper balcony thought of his past. He didn’t have to explain anything to them. But not in front of her. _Not her._

Pegasus continued slowly, savoring every detail. “…One by one you _clawed_ the _Blue-Eyes_ from each of their trembling grasps. You forced the American into bankruptcy.” Kaiba blanched. “For the second card you made deals with the mafia. And from what I understand the Hong Konger committed _suicide_ not two days after you paid him a visit.” Pegasus looked Kaiba up and down where the latter stood rigid as stone. “And I hardly need tell of the _tragic_ sequence of events that hospitalized old Grandfather Mutou.” Kaiba said nothing. Kisara said nothing. Pegasus whispered, “…What horror have you yourself not inflicted in the name of processing this card?”

When had this become his trial? Kaiba’s next thought rose unbidden. _Am I truly guilty?_

Pegasus went on, “Did _I_ send her to live in a castle on an island, when she was so terrified of water?”

“Father, _stop.”_

“Did _I_ rip the card in half, laboring under some twisted notion that I was punishing it for betraying me by acting in the hand of another duelist? Did _I_ then infect the Blue-Eyes from some secret base in my mansion, hiding like a coward?” Pegasus leered. Kaiba swallowed. “Did _I_ allow a mammoth to force through her torn side, which had already been ripped in half so viciously that she could hardly stand without a cane!?” Kaiba looked at Kisara with fresh eyes. He stared at her shaking form. Dread at what Pegasus was telling him muddled all other thoughts. His mind begged him to reject what he was hearing as nonsense – there was no way the girl was connected to the card – but his eyes confirmed the truth. The creator of Duel Monsters rattled on. “You must have hated her very much for not taking care of you, for not keeping her _promise_ to you, as you imagined you were owed. What a way to have your bitter revenge.”

Pegasus’s words from some minutes before resonated in Kaiba’s head. _‘I’m truly touched by your devotion. But, when will you learn that the same devotion is not returned by the Blue-Eyes. For as you see, they are not so loyal!’ …_ Of course she was not. How could anyone possibly be loyal to their tormentor?

“I didn’t know,” he croaked. He gripped at the arena, eyes riveted to her. “I swear I did not know.” All those times he’d felt hesitation, and had shoved it down. With a hollow thud within his chest Kaiba watched shock wash over Kisara’s bloodied face. Not until this moment had she been certain of his ignorance on the matter. Some part of her had believed that he knew he was inflicting pain on her, and had not cared. _My god. What have I done?_ Why had she tried to help him in the dungeons? She should despise him, just as Pegasus implied. Did she despise him? How could she not.

…Had he, Kaiba, truly been the cause of all Kisara’s illness and injury?

“And, on that note,” Pegasus flipped his silver hair. “I think I’ll play _The Dragon Piper.”_

A tremor went through Kaiba and he tried to get his head back in the game. He blinked, staring at the field. _Dragon Piper…_ That could only mean one thing. Pegasus was going to draw the Blue-Eyes out of the Jar and bend it to his will. He would turn it into another Toon. The nightmare would begin all over again, as would Kisara’s pain. “No way,” Kaiba snarled in response to his own final thought. “Not if I can shatter that Dragon Piper right here!”

In a blind fury and desperation, knowing that he _could not_ allow her to come to anymore harm, Kaiba attacked.

Kisara cried out for him to halt, but it was too late. As his monster struck the Piper, Kaiba’s own _Crush Card_ virus came back to haunt, and infected his entire deck in one strike. He threw up a hand as sparks and crackling electricity engulfed his deck, spreading the virus. The air was filled with the smell of burnt paper. His deck hissed and spilled across the table. With a collection of only the strongest monsters, a virus that would have been crippling to another duelist was fatal for Seto Kaiba.

“This can’t be…” Yugi whispered, clutching at the railing.

“One more attack, Kaiba-boy, and you’re finished. Shame, when you consider _all_ that’s on the line,” Pegasus gloated.

Kaiba stared blankly ahead. The rage drained from his face along with the blood. He felt cold and sick. If there had been anything in this stomach Kaiba would have heaved it out now. “Mokuba…” he rasped, “I tried my very best…”

“Your best failed you!” Pegasus laughed.

A new Toon monster hurtled towards Kaiba. At least… at least the Blue-Eyes had not become a Toon again. The _Dragon Piper_ had not bent her to Pegasus’s will. No… Now it simply remained in that _Capture Jar_ upon the field, a prisoner of this castle as much as Mokuba was. Kaiba’s dull eye turned to look at her. She stared at him with a mirrored look of horror. “Forgive me Mokuba… I am so sorry.” He closes his eyes to the destruction, and to Kisara.

The blow hit like a scythe of death and destroyed Kaiba’s last line of defense. “There are no more cards you can play!” Pegasus cheered. “Therefore you _lose,_ Kaiba-boy.”

As though on cue the arena shut down. The holographic projectors went silent. It was over. “And you’ve lost much more than just this duel, haven’t you, Kaiba? You’ve lost the only chance you had at rescuing your baby brother!” Pegasus smiled. “You let him down. But don’t worry my dear friend,” he reached into his coat and drew out a blank card. It bore the same background as that on which Mokuba’s image had appeared the night before. “I’ll spare you the agony of carrying on in this world without him.”

“Dear god, Father, stop! Please, _stop!”_ Kisara was practically halfway over the railing again, her head whipping from Kaiba to Pegasus. “Stop! Don’t do it! I’m _begging_ you, _please!!!”_

Kaiba stirred from the stupor of his loss. “What is that?” he whispered, fear just barely registering over the devastation and fatigue.

The _Millennium Eye_ gleamed, and Pegasus’s hair billowed around him. Everyone in the room threw up their hands to shield their eyes from the light– except for Kaiba, who was transfixed. He could not tear himself away from that brightness. Suddenly, he was very afraid. “It is the final fate of your soul, Seto Kaiba!” Pegasus’s voice echoed across the light.

Kaiba tried to yell. His voice wavered, then rose to a gasp, a muffled cry and then, as the gleam subsided, it muted. As though snuffed out. On the card, the downcast silhouette of the eighteen year old Seto Kaiba appeared.

**…**

Kisara felt numb. She backed away from the railing, gripping her cane. Somewhere in the back of her throat was the horrible tightness which made her feel that she ought to cry. But her face was numb. She tried to swallow, and she tasted blood. Her father, meanwhile, cooed at the vacant form that remained of Seto Kaiba.

“And while your soul is away, your body will be employed as my obedient servant.” He lifted the two versions of _The Soul’s Prison_ card before him. “Ah, the brothers Kaiba! One in each hand.” Pleased, he looked from one to the other. “But even though your cards are so very close, your souls have never been further apart! At least when I had Mokuba locked up you were both still living within the same dimension,” he boasted loudly. “But now,” he sighed dramatically, “you’re _worlds_ apart.” Carefully, almost dotingly, he returned the cards to within his coat. “Take away that empty shell,” he ordered casually without even looking across the field. “Teach it to wash _dishes_ or something.”

Kisara stared mutely as two men came down the ramp, took Kaiba underneath the arms, and hauled him away. As they dragged his limp body his feet scraped the floor.

“What do you say, Angel-face,” Pegasus snapped to look at her so suddenly that Kisara stumbled back a step. “Perhaps you need a new manservant to do your laundry? I see you’ve made quite the mess of your cardigan. I would happily gift him to you. After all, never let it be said I wasn’t a _loving father.”_

Kisara glanced down at her front, splattered in blood. Still she could not speak.

“However, all that being said, _you_ have hardly been the _loving daughter,”_ Pegasus chided. “Really darling, what _was_ that? Siding with the enemy, even after everything he has done to hurt you, while I have done nothing but care and love you, ever since I took you in out of the goodness of my heart all those years ago!”

Kisara looked back up at him, not comprehending. What was he talking about? What on earth was he talking about? Did he not realize what he had just done? To Seto? To her?

“Quite frankly, this pathetic little crush, as well as your interference, insignificant as it was, almost cost me the duel! What with a Duelist Kingdom Champion to select,” he gave a wave at Yugi and his friends on the other balcony, “I’m afraid I simply cannot stand for any more interruptions. And so, I’ve truly sorry my darling, but you’ll just have to go.”

With a flourish, Pegasus pulled a knob on his side of the arena, and the floor vanished from beneath Kisara’s feet.

It was a trap door. The same trap door that, within the next few days, would eject the finalist Keith Howard when, forgetting it in a blind rage, he would try to gun Pegasus down in revenge for the humiliation he had suffered at the Intercontinental Duel Monsters Tournament. Now, however, the door opened for Kisara. With no one in the world left to care about what would happen to her, Kisara looked across the room in desperation as the emptiness rose up to meet her. Amidst the sea of shocked faces she, for an instant, locked eyes with Bakura– enraged and mortified.

In the next instant Kisara’s heart rose into her mouth as she fell. She careening down a tunnel, ricocheting off stone walls, yelping with each collision. Somewhere along the way her cane shattered. She hits her head. The world was spinning darkness. 

The tunnel fell away around her. The sea air hit her nostrils and, for an instant, revived her as she hurtled through the air down the side of the cliff. She hits the water, and the darkness of the night gave way to the blackness of the waves. For a moment she sunk limply with the pain, deeper and deeper. Then the voices found her, as they always found her in water.

_“Save us!” “Kisara!” “Help!” “Daughter!” “Kisa!” “SISTER!”_

Her body convulsed, limbs tearing in all directions, her torso on fire. They were coming for her. All those hands grasping at her, begging her to save them, telling her she had _failed._ They came to drag her into the abyss from which she could not save them. To which she had _condemned_ them. One pair of arms wrapped around her and hauled her body through the water. There was nothing she could do. They had her. She could not break the grip around her. She opened her mouth to scream, to cry out the one name that could save her from the deluge.

 ** _“CRITIAS!”_** The last of the air gushed in a stream of bubbles from her mouth. The abyss engulfed her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Illustration of Kisara, as the Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon is unleashed: [SetoKisa Week 1. Day 8. “You Keep it All In.”](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/634607087247294464/waifine-september-27th-day-8-you-keep-it)
> 
> Illustration of the moment Kaiba realizes all the harm he has done the Blue-Eyes: [SetoKisa Week 2. Day 6. “Forgiveness.”](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/634607211057987584/waifine-november-5th-day-6-forgiveness)
> 
> Illustration of Kisara's fall into water: [SetoKisa Week 1. Day 1. ““Bath time together in the sea.”](https://waifines.tumblr.com/post/634607406311243776/waifine-september-20th-day-1-bath-time)


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